this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2023
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Dinosaur lungs are much more efficient than mammal lungs. Their bones are lighter, too.
It's also why birds can fly so much higher and be so much larger than bats.
I'm not comparing dinosaurs to mammals though. I'm comparing them to pterosaurs. Or more specifically, I'm comparing the specific dinosaur in question (T. rex) to the largest and most likely to struggle with flying of the pterosaurs, (Q. northropi).
T. rex was, according to my quick search, at least 5000 kg. Q. northropi was just 250 kg at the higher end of estimates. The dinosaur had an armspan less than a metre, while the pterosaur's was in excess of 10 times that.
I wasn't responding to comparing dinosaurs to pterosaurs. I was responding to the part about them being big because of the atmosphere.
There's a number of reasons we don't have brontosaur-sized elephants. The differences in the atmosphere explains far less than hyper-efficient lungs and light bones.
Oh I see. Good to know!