It is possible to calculate the physical size of these rings from first principles. Since you observe how big these rings appear on the sky, you can figure out how far away they are, and from this determine the expansion history of the universe.
You make it sound like "dark matter" is normal matter and the "ordinary matter" is the abnormal stuff, since ordinary matter formed afterwards and has more complex interactions in that it supplements gravitation with electromagnetism and what not. And of course there's far more dark matter than ordinary.
While I'm not an astronomer, I think observations such as the the Bullet Cluster and the different position s for where the mass seems to be - including big changes in morphology, not just location - clearly indicates that something dark matter/energy-like must exist. The precise nature of this DM/DE is an a separate question.