Have Dinosaur Bones Grown?

One way to explain the enormous size of dinosaur bones is to suggest that they have grown over time. If the bones have grown, then the mystery of how the dinosaurs could have been as large as they appear to have been would be solved.

At the face of it, this theory seems to have merit. However, it has two major problems, first of which is an implied assumption that the continental shelves where the fossils have been found are growing. This is not the case. It is the oceans that have grown. The shelves have remained unchanged in extent.

Earth expansion as seen from the south pole

A second problem is that fossils sometimes come as complete skeletons, with every bone perfectly laid out in the correct relative position to every other bone. This would be very difficult to explain if the bones have grown unless everything around the bones have grown at the exact same pace. The bones would be a mess, partially grown into each other and with proportions all out of whack. Without a good explanation as to how a synchronized growth mechanism would work, the theory that dinosaur bones have grown over time seems unlikely to be correct.