Why is everything so small now?

Life on Earth is the smallest it has been since the Permian.

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  1. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    Megafauna are not a good evolutionary strategy. They represent a monopolization of resources into a few large individuals. This doesn't work when you have few resources (any ecological crisis) or when a superpredator comes along (humans).

  2. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    The earth expands, so do fossils.

  3. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    There was way more oxygen in the air. The earth was at least like 80% swamp or rainforest up until the ice age. More oxygen in the air means more buoyancy to support larger animals. You can see this effect in real time in insects; they tend to grow larger in tropical climates.

  4. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    Open the door, get on the floor, everybody walk the dinosaur

  5. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    Gravity
    The gravity on the planet was weaker due to it's presance within a plasma sheath
    This also explains the uniform warmth that allowed ferns to grow near the poles
    When the local stellar configuration changed, the dinos couldn't exist as they were simply too big
    And all of this is simly due to gravity being a byproduct of electromagnetic resonance between molecules.

    • 12 months ago
      Anonymous
  6. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    homie we have the largest animal still swimming today. We had the largest carnivore to ever exist just a million years ago.

  7. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    Atmosphere was thicker which helps with heat exchange.

  8. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    Being larger can provide many evolutionary advantages as bigger animals are less vulnerable to predators and can compete more assertively for resources, as well as let them reach new sources of food (some probably fed from treetops, as giraffes do today). The existence of bigger herbivores also means that carnivorous animals have to grow in order to be effective hunters.

  9. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    What about whales?

    • 12 months ago
      Anonymous

      They are abusing the krill dive glitch which will soon be patched out.

  10. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    that's clearly an elephant
    what a scam

  11. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    >now
    you realize bacteria was first, right

  12. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    wut. The largest of the permian synapsids was still smaller than an elephant, not by much but still.

    • 12 months ago
      Anonymous

      I think on average they were larger than today's land fauna THOUGH

  13. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    the largest animal ever is currently alive

    • 12 months ago
      Dream Island Obsessional Park

      What about whales?

      homie we have the largest animal still swimming today. We had the largest carnivore to ever exist just a million years ago.

      It is possible that the Blue Whale is NOT the biggest animal to exist. Also, if we are sticking to mainstream science, Blue Whale is the largest carnivore to exist, krill and fish are animals.

  14. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    Now that's a mogging.

  15. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    Humans killing them, plus massive environmental changes from the ice age that life didnt get much of a chance to adjust to. People don't realize just how recently the ice age ended, and how different things were just a few 10s of thousands of years ago. Pic related lived among humans.
    The sudden end of the ice age was basically a small mass extinction, and then the rise of humans was another one. To be fair though its not really fair to compare things to the mid-late mesozoic when things were the biggest they ever were, the permian and before things were mostly similar/smaller in size to today.

    • 12 months ago
      Anonymous

      Bullshit. That ((science)) suggests that as the explanation for the extinction of megafauna when boneyards for megafauna exists everywhere that is clearly caused by something other than humans going hunting just makes it clear that we have no idea or any interest in finding out why megafauna died out.

      Not that anon but it's important to point out that we've been generalizing and blaming all megafaunal extinction on mankind (either because eco-freaks think we're a blight on the planet or because anthropocentrics can't help but believe we're the hottest shit to ever grace the earth), doesn't mean that there's an alternative explanation readily available.
      Challenging a theory doesn't automatically mean the burden of proof is on me to provide a different theory, the burden of proof is on those supporting theirs.
      You might assert that the dinosaurs went extinct because of climate change and I might say that's probably inaccurate, but that's not to say I have to assert my own theory as a rebuttal.

      Having said that, I do have my own personal opinion. Knowing that megafaunal extinctions have happened all the time in earth's history and none of them to blame on one single factor alone, I find it highly unlikely that one species could have caused the decline in megafauna, especially prior to the industrial age. It was probably climate-related, coinciding with the terrible global cooling, and humans were adept at filling niches that were left vacant or weakened by this cooling which explains our sudden success in combination with the downfall of much of the megafauna. Mountain formation and tectonic fractures probably did more to drive megafauna to extinction that mankind did.

      I'm the anon you replied to. I honestly feel mostly the same as you, the megafauna was probably already on the decline, but overhunting from humans was probably also a major factor.
      Most of those huge animals had little to no predators, and more importantly: didn't evolve on the same continent as anything even vaguely human-like. When looking at us, they probably didn't even perceive us with our pointy sticks as a threat until they were already gravely injured and bleeding out. Given that they were already declining, and how quickly we spread and adapted, they had doubly no chance to survive.
      I honestly believe that if it were just humans invading, they'd eventually wise up and learn to avoid us, or at least make it a little harder for us to throw shit at them, a few of them might have still gone extinct though which of course would cause its own issues.
      The climate change issue might be a bit harder to avoid, at the very least I think they would have held on for a bit longer if it weren't for us, but you're right, they probably would have still largely died out.
      When people say humans WERENT a factor is where I draw the line, we absolutely had something to do with it, even if it was relatively minor.

      Overhunting hypothesis is moronic. We are talking about most of the megafauna in the americas, europe and asia disappearing within a few thousand years. Humans probably numbering in the low millions genociding hundreds of species and hundreds of millions of individuals to the point of complete population collapse. Including dangerous predators like cave bears and american lions and dire wolfs.
      How did they do that? Atlanteans airstriking mammoth herds with their cristal space ships?
      The clovis culture in north america disappeared at the same time as the megafauna too. So I guess after they killed of all of the animals, they had a total war all of them were dead too?

      The answer to how it happened is the impact of a comet on the north american ice shield at the younger dryas boundary, causing widespread forest fires, meltdown of large parts of the ice shield resulting in flooding, then blocking out sunlight from dust and soot in the air, resulting in an extended impact winter.
      That way you get a complete foodchain collapse and everything that relied calorie inputs starved, if they survived the immediate effects of the impact.
      Smaller animals can make it on much less resources, so those are the ones that repopulated during the holocene.

      Now humans might have finished of some small localized population of survivors of a few species, but certainly not more than that.

      • 12 months ago
        Anonymous

        prior to alvarez nobody posited bolide impact as a mechanism of extinction. Now everyone does it all the time. I call it the asteroid lottery You'll be wrong a million times if you blame everything on an asteroid. But there's always that chance you'll be right eventually. In your case you're wrong, but it's funny to see you try to pass it off as anything other than a cheap copy of much better people's work.

        • 12 months ago
          Anonymous

          its a lottery until you have accumulating evidence due to geology formed by massive floods, like the channeled scablands, the fingerlakes, drumlins, enormous boulderfields and pothols and oversized rivervalleys all over north america. Then add a growing number of impact proxies: microspherules, nanodiamonds, higher concentration of platinum group metals, all dayed to the younger dryas boundary.
          Prior to Alvarez, they said that the dinosaurs just disappeared at some point. Maybe climate change or something. And it took finding and dating the crater to shut up all the skeptics.
          Now everyone thinks the megafauna just disappeared at some point, probably climate change and overhunting -.-
          Maybe they'll get a date on hiawatha crater in greenland at some point. Seems like a good candidate.

          • 12 months ago
            Anonymous

            You won't live long enough to see that proven true. Because it's not.

      • 12 months ago
        Anonymous

        >Now humans might have finished of some small localized population of survivors of a few species, but certainly not more than that.
        See, I actually believe in the younger dryas impact theory, but it's this bit here that's the clincher.
        If humans wiped out an endangered reduced population that would have otherwise bounced back, humans should still get the blame for the extinction.

        • 12 months ago
          Anonymous

          >If humans wiped out an endangered reduced population that would have otherwise bounced back, humans should still get the blame for the extinction.
          You clearly aren't autistic enough to post here. The autist you're talking to needs there to be only one cause, and that cause must rule out other causes. He is not ok with multiple causes, or one of several causes receiving what he thinks is full blame. He is a robot, incapable of understanding the sort of thinking you demonstrate. If he was capable of thought like that the topic wouldn't even be brought up.

  16. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    sauropods and theropods had very efficient respitory systems

  17. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    Literally only sauropods ever got really massive as land animals. Everything else was comparable to mammals (albeit, the large ones were more abundant in the past, and there were big carnivores, probably due to warmer global temperatures, more energy in the food chain overall, etc.).
    So the question is basically 'why don't we live in the age of sauropods' and the answer to that is that most of the history of land animals didn't feature sauropods, so we're actually in a fairly typical time.

    • 12 months ago
      Anonymous

      The average size of dinosaurs was much larger than that of mammals, nevermind sauropods.

      Personally, I think it has to do with the higher metabolism of mammals. Live fast, don't grow too big.

      • 12 months ago
        Anonymous

        it's because dinosaurs were comparably lighter than mammals so they could afford to grow larger

  18. 12 months ago
    Anonymous

    we killed the big stuff

    • 12 months ago
      Anonymous

      Bullshit. That ((science)) suggests that as the explanation for the extinction of megafauna when boneyards for megafauna exists everywhere that is clearly caused by something other than humans going hunting just makes it clear that we have no idea or any interest in finding out why megafauna died out.

      • 12 months ago
        Anonymous

        Okay anon. What's your theory?

        • 12 months ago
          Anonymous

          Not that anon but it's important to point out that we've been generalizing and blaming all megafaunal extinction on mankind (either because eco-freaks think we're a blight on the planet or because anthropocentrics can't help but believe we're the hottest shit to ever grace the earth), doesn't mean that there's an alternative explanation readily available.
          Challenging a theory doesn't automatically mean the burden of proof is on me to provide a different theory, the burden of proof is on those supporting theirs.
          You might assert that the dinosaurs went extinct because of climate change and I might say that's probably inaccurate, but that's not to say I have to assert my own theory as a rebuttal.

          Having said that, I do have my own personal opinion. Knowing that megafaunal extinctions have happened all the time in earth's history and none of them to blame on one single factor alone, I find it highly unlikely that one species could have caused the decline in megafauna, especially prior to the industrial age. It was probably climate-related, coinciding with the terrible global cooling, and humans were adept at filling niches that were left vacant or weakened by this cooling which explains our sudden success in combination with the downfall of much of the megafauna. Mountain formation and tectonic fractures probably did more to drive megafauna to extinction that mankind did.

          • 12 months ago
            Anonymous

            I'm the anon you replied to. I honestly feel mostly the same as you, the megafauna was probably already on the decline, but overhunting from humans was probably also a major factor.
            Most of those huge animals had little to no predators, and more importantly: didn't evolve on the same continent as anything even vaguely human-like. When looking at us, they probably didn't even perceive us with our pointy sticks as a threat until they were already gravely injured and bleeding out. Given that they were already declining, and how quickly we spread and adapted, they had doubly no chance to survive.
            I honestly believe that if it were just humans invading, they'd eventually wise up and learn to avoid us, or at least make it a little harder for us to throw shit at them, a few of them might have still gone extinct though which of course would cause its own issues.
            The climate change issue might be a bit harder to avoid, at the very least I think they would have held on for a bit longer if it weren't for us, but you're right, they probably would have still largely died out.
            When people say humans WERENT a factor is where I draw the line, we absolutely had something to do with it, even if it was relatively minor.

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