And it’s time for another review of the year, so here’s some of what happened in 2024.
‘Disruptive’ Internet
Last year I began talking about ‘Disruptive Science’. This year the disruption seems to have spread to the whole Internet. Our local hospitals declared a ‘major incident’ in November following a cyber attack on the Wirral NHS Trust. Appointments were cancelled as staff were forced to do everything manually since all systems holding records were unavailable. Unfortunately that seemed to be only one incident among many.
One of the sites severely affected by a cyber attack was the Internet Archive. It’s best known for the Wayback Machine—a digital repository of billions of web pages dating back to 1996. It was very usefully to me because it automatically archived my web site so anyone could look back at old versions. But after an attack towards the end of the year the whole site had to be taken down, and when it returned the dinox.org archive didn’t display correctly. Let’s hope it’s fixed eventually.
Dinosaurs
Fortunately none of this disruption has stopped me enjoying myself. At the end of May a friend and I joined a week long trip organised by the Open University to look at the fossil Lagerstätten of South-West Germany. These fossils are some of the best preserved in the world and include some excellent dinosaur specimens—sometimes including preserved soft tissues.
These fossils span geological time up to the present day. My friend is going to give a talk, Treasures of the Messel Pit, to the Liverpool Geological Society based on our trip. These fossils are from the Eocene after the dinosaurs became extinct and include many primitive mammals. I am looking forward to listening to it.
One of the museums we visited had a life-size model of one of the smaller sauropod dinosaurs rearing up. We disagree about which species it was depicting—I thought it was probably meant to be Diplodocus but other members of the group thought it was Brontosaurus.
‘Disruptive’ Internet
Last year I began talking about ‘Disruptive Science’. This year the disruption seems to have spread to the whole Internet. Our local hospitals declared a ‘major incident’ in November following a cyber attack on the Wirral NHS Trust. Appointments were cancelled as staff were forced to do everything manually since all systems holding records were unavailable. Unfortunately that seemed to be only one incident among many.
One of the sites severely affected by a cyber attack was the Internet Archive. It’s best known for the Wayback Machine—a digital repository of billions of web pages dating back to 1996. It was very usefully to me because it automatically archived my web site so anyone could look back at old versions. But after an attack towards the end of the year the whole site had to be taken down, and when it returned the dinox.org archive didn’t display correctly. Let’s hope it’s fixed eventually.
Dinosaurs
Fortunately none of this disruption has stopped me enjoying myself. At the end of May a friend and I joined a week long trip organised by the Open University to look at the fossil Lagerstätten of South-West Germany. These fossils are some of the best preserved in the world and include some excellent dinosaur specimens—sometimes including preserved soft tissues.
These fossils span geological time up to the present day. My friend is going to give a talk, Treasures of the Messel Pit, to the Liverpool Geological Society based on our trip. These fossils are from the Eocene after the dinosaurs became extinct and include many primitive mammals. I am looking forward to listening to it.
One of the museums we visited had a life-size model of one of the smaller sauropod dinosaurs rearing up. We disagree about which species it was depicting—I thought it was probably meant to be Diplodocus but other members of the group thought it was Brontosaurus.
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There has been great debates about whether these smaller sauropod dinosaurs could rear up. They were about three to four times the mass of an elephant so calculations indicate they were too big to rear up since their rear legs wouldn’t be able to support them. Certainly comparisons with modern elephants indicates they were too large for such a lifestyle.
On the other hand these smaller sauropod dinosaurs are perfectly balanced as if they had evolved to rear up. Various bio-mechanical studies have shown that they are so perfectly balanced they would only need a slight push from their front feet to rotate their whole bodies upwards.
The answer to this paradox is that these sauropod dinosaurs could be much more athletic in a reduced palaeogravity. So they really could rear up like that with great ease.
The year 2024 is the five year anniversary for the current list of Interesting Publications by various authors. James Maxlow is the author with the most publications in that time. It’s now full with dozens of articles and some books mainly about Earth expansion and palaeogravity, so I will be creating a new five year list next year.
Research Gate continue to do a fine job in making many of these papers widely available. They told me in June that there had been 30,000 reads of my own research items on their site and I’m sure articles by other readers must be as well read.
My article, Ancient Life’s Gravity and its Implications for the Expanding Earth, had reached 8,596 reads towards the end of the year. The article calculating palaeogravity based on four Tyrannosaurus rex specimens reached 3,686 reads, while the article about Giraffatitan (=Brachiosaurus) brancai reached 2,083 reads. There are links to my articles on my List of Publications page.
It is also the 30 year anniversary since the 1st edition of my book, Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth, was published. It’s now on the 3rd edition and still selling—so everyone must still enjoy reading it. It’s also nice to continue to receive readers comments.
Book sales for The Hidden History of Earth Expansion also continued throughout the year. Amazon in particular seem to have regular sales offering copies at reduced prices and I note that it has been in their Top Hundred in Geology a few times.
Early in the year John Eichler also published his book, Some Thoughts on Empirical Evidence Support Expansion Tectonics. I’ve been waiting about a decade for John to publish this because one of the major issues discussed is his suggestion about how mass increase occurs. By June it was in the Amazon Best Sellers Rank in Volcanoes, Earthquakes & Tectonics. Further details about these books are available on my list of Earth expansion books.
James Maxlow’s books also look as though they are continuing to sell well and he also set up an Expansion Tectonics Facebook page. The great advantage of these Facebook pages is that they allow discussions about various aspects of Earth expansion.
In recent years Dennis McCarthy has been mainly focusing on the evidence that Thomas North wrote most of the work Shakespeare is credited with, but in an interview with Richard Hanania he mentioned a geophysics paper written in 2007. Dennis had wondered: Why is the bottom of the globe so blue - and the northern hemisphere disproportionately continental? I’ve talked about him many times before because he’s written articles and book chapters with evidence for Earth expansion. You can find these previous comments using the Search the Site page.
I had reported in 2021 how the discovery that transform faults stretch and grow was astonishing for Plate Tectonics but was predicted by Earth expansion. At the time the Nature paper was behind a pay-wall but it is now free to download from Research Gate so I have been able to add a link to that in the references section of the report (at the bottom).
Towards the end of the year I’ve also been comparing my Expansion Tectonics reconstructions with James Maxlow reconstructions, placing them on a YouTube Playlist. If the science behind the reconstructions is sound they should look very similar. I’ve found that they look virtually identical—if they are different it is generally due to some error on my reconstructions.
I hope everyone has had a Merry Xmas and I wish you all a Happy New Year.
Comment on Facebook or Twitter
Page last updated 28 Dec 2024
Wayback
On the other hand these smaller sauropod dinosaurs are perfectly balanced as if they had evolved to rear up. Various bio-mechanical studies have shown that they are so perfectly balanced they would only need a slight push from their front feet to rotate their whole bodies upwards.
The answer to this paradox is that these sauropod dinosaurs could be much more athletic in a reduced palaeogravity. So they really could rear up like that with great ease.
The year 2024 is the five year anniversary for the current list of Interesting Publications by various authors. James Maxlow is the author with the most publications in that time. It’s now full with dozens of articles and some books mainly about Earth expansion and palaeogravity, so I will be creating a new five year list next year.
Research Gate continue to do a fine job in making many of these papers widely available. They told me in June that there had been 30,000 reads of my own research items on their site and I’m sure articles by other readers must be as well read.
My article, Ancient Life’s Gravity and its Implications for the Expanding Earth, had reached 8,596 reads towards the end of the year. The article calculating palaeogravity based on four Tyrannosaurus rex specimens reached 3,686 reads, while the article about Giraffatitan (=Brachiosaurus) brancai reached 2,083 reads. There are links to my articles on my List of Publications page.
It is also the 30 year anniversary since the 1st edition of my book, Dinosaurs and the Expanding Earth, was published. It’s now on the 3rd edition and still selling—so everyone must still enjoy reading it. It’s also nice to continue to receive readers comments.
Book sales for The Hidden History of Earth Expansion also continued throughout the year. Amazon in particular seem to have regular sales offering copies at reduced prices and I note that it has been in their Top Hundred in Geology a few times.
Early in the year John Eichler also published his book, Some Thoughts on Empirical Evidence Support Expansion Tectonics. I’ve been waiting about a decade for John to publish this because one of the major issues discussed is his suggestion about how mass increase occurs. By June it was in the Amazon Best Sellers Rank in Volcanoes, Earthquakes & Tectonics. Further details about these books are available on my list of Earth expansion books.
James Maxlow’s books also look as though they are continuing to sell well and he also set up an Expansion Tectonics Facebook page. The great advantage of these Facebook pages is that they allow discussions about various aspects of Earth expansion.
In recent years Dennis McCarthy has been mainly focusing on the evidence that Thomas North wrote most of the work Shakespeare is credited with, but in an interview with Richard Hanania he mentioned a geophysics paper written in 2007. Dennis had wondered: Why is the bottom of the globe so blue - and the northern hemisphere disproportionately continental? I’ve talked about him many times before because he’s written articles and book chapters with evidence for Earth expansion. You can find these previous comments using the Search the Site page.
I had reported in 2021 how the discovery that transform faults stretch and grow was astonishing for Plate Tectonics but was predicted by Earth expansion. At the time the Nature paper was behind a pay-wall but it is now free to download from Research Gate so I have been able to add a link to that in the references section of the report (at the bottom).
Towards the end of the year I’ve also been comparing my Expansion Tectonics reconstructions with James Maxlow reconstructions, placing them on a YouTube Playlist. If the science behind the reconstructions is sound they should look very similar. I’ve found that they look virtually identical—if they are different it is generally due to some error on my reconstructions.
I hope everyone has had a Merry Xmas and I wish you all a Happy New Year.
Comment on Facebook or Twitter
Page last updated 28 Dec 2024
Wayback
A life sized model of one of the smaller sauropod dinosaurs rearing, with me in front for scale. There has been a great deal of debate about whether such a large animal, about three to four times the mass of an elephant, would be capable of rearing up like that.