>So if dinosaurs would exist today nobody would care about them except eco hippies, just like whales, right?
depends. ppl get major league upset when deer, boars, bear etc. destroy their lawns etc. - now imagine a (herd) of Brachisaurus (OR SOMETHING BIGGER!) coming through your lawn. chances are, even if dinosaurs were alive during the stone age, we would have hunted them to extinction by the arrial of gun powder at the latest. Triceratops probably were as agressive as hippos/rhinos, you can't have those running around your suburbia....
Baleen whales got massive very specifically to migrate to the polar regions where there was a super-abundance of food.
The giant sauropods also are believed to have evolved under a very particular set of evolutionary pressures.
It's not as simple as bigger == better
False premise. We know of at least one ichthyosaur that was blue whale sized, and thus this was probably the largest species we know of (since the species may have undiscovered larger specimens).
In general are ichthyosaurs are a probable candidate for containing the largest animals that have ever lived, and likely ever will.
>We know of at least one ichthyosaur that was blue whale sized
We know of an extremely fragmentary piece of jaw that assuming the same proportions as smaller giant ichthyosaurs that it would be the size of a blue whale, but that’s an extreme assumption and saying it’s likely the biggest is misleading. Ichthyosaurs were not filter feeders so have much more of a limit on their size than whales
The Antarctic and arctic conditions we see today that allow for strong polar ocean circulation and super krill blooms did not exist until whales were around to take advantage of them. They showed up at the right time to hit the get big jackpot.
As a freediver, I'm literally a whale.
It always was
Actually, everything is hippo. Whale's just gave up the feet
Jump, jive, and whale!
Yes, things are going quite whale.
And you?
So if dinosaurs would exist today nobody would care about them except eco hippies, just like whales, right?
>So if dinosaurs would exist today nobody would care about them except eco hippies, just like whales, right?
depends. ppl get major league upset when deer, boars, bear etc. destroy their lawns etc. - now imagine a (herd) of Brachisaurus (OR SOMETHING BIGGER!) coming through your lawn. chances are, even if dinosaurs were alive during the stone age, we would have hunted them to extinction by the arrial of gun powder at the latest. Triceratops probably were as agressive as hippos/rhinos, you can't have those running around your suburbia....
We hunted shit to extinction during the stone age. That this dumb theory is still being told is annoying beyond belief.
What are those two brown dolphins on the right?
Why don't bowheads have a mouth live the other filter feeders?
Actually everything is a fish. Every vertebrate is, anyway. Go ahead try to prove me wrong.
>Go ahead try to prove me wrong.
Why would I? Everything you said was correct.
Why are whales so much bigger than other prehistoric sea animals when land mammals aren't as big as prehistoric land animals?
Baleen whales got massive very specifically to migrate to the polar regions where there was a super-abundance of food.
The giant sauropods also are believed to have evolved under a very particular set of evolutionary pressures.
It's not as simple as bigger == better
Megalodon's extinction allowed them to grow larger in a vacuum period where they had no giant predators left.
Pre-Meg extinction, whales on average might've been slightly smaller but they were also much faster and the oceans were far more temperate and warmer.
False premise. We know of at least one ichthyosaur that was blue whale sized, and thus this was probably the largest species we know of (since the species may have undiscovered larger specimens).
In general are ichthyosaurs are a probable candidate for containing the largest animals that have ever lived, and likely ever will.
No that's wrong. The largest animal that ever lived is your mom.
>We know of at least one ichthyosaur that was blue whale sized
We know of an extremely fragmentary piece of jaw that assuming the same proportions as smaller giant ichthyosaurs that it would be the size of a blue whale, but that’s an extreme assumption and saying it’s likely the biggest is misleading. Ichthyosaurs were not filter feeders so have much more of a limit on their size than whales
>Ichthyosaurs were not filter feeders
Neither is the sperm whale
we dont and will never know the full extant of prehistoric animals, because of osedax destroying bones
The Antarctic and arctic conditions we see today that allow for strong polar ocean circulation and super krill blooms did not exist until whales were around to take advantage of them. They showed up at the right time to hit the get big jackpot.
everything is cetacean
Cetaceans (/sJˈteJʃənz/; from Latin cetus 'whale'