Author(s)

Alexey Ju. Retejum

Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.

The most striking contrasts that are found on the continents in paleogeographic reconstructions of the end of the Mesozoic era are the occurrence on the place of the disappeared humid subtropics of the largest Gobi Desert in Eurasia with air temperatures falling below 50° from the freezing point and annual precipitation totals at the level of 100 mm. Science does not know the processes that can lead to a cooling of the atmosphere at 70° and other equally radical changes in nature with a stable position of the blocks of the earth’s crust in space. Changes in the environment of this magnitude can only be the result of land moving northward for a distance equal to about half the radius of the Earth. Titanosaurs, described by the remains in the Gobi deposits, had a body volume, which at modern gravity corresponds to a mass of 10 to 30 ton. However, animals with such a mass and such growth could not exist now. To create the necessary pressure in the vessels and provide energy to the body, Mongolian sauropods would need a heart of 2 - 3 m in diameter. Known types of muscle tissue are unable to maintain an elongated neck and head with a mass of more than a ton. The femur bones of four-legged dinosaurs had strength sufficient to move on land only animals weighing no more than 5 - 7 tons. The bones of giant bipedal dinosaurs at a constant gravitational field would have to be subjected to specific loads, several times greater than the bones of modern elephants, which is excluded. The natural conclusion about the action of a lesser gravity in the Mesozoic provides a solution to the mystery of the truly global spread in that era of bipedal mode of movement as the most energy efficient.

Expanding Earth, Goby Desert, Cretaceous, Fossils, Giant Dinosaurs, Gravity, Atmospheric Circulation

Retejum, A. (2020) The Expanding Earth: Indisputable Evidences of the Gobi Desert. Open Journal of Geology, 10, 1-12. doi: 10.4236/ojg.2020.101001.