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by zerogreen on August 14th, 2003

zerogreen

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If all life started from single celled organisms, why were the dinosaurs so big in comparison to today's animals?

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  • by Morphius on March 29th, 2004

    Morphius

    The deeper into the ocean you go, the bigger animals tend to get. Giant Squid naturally live deep in the ocean, miles beneath the surface, as do some sharks. Whales are also big, for some dive miles into the ocean to hunt their prey. And why? Because the amount of presure deep in the ocean is worse than Earth's gravity, and being so huge counter acts this.


    Now since most of what we "know" about the dinosaurs comes from what we know about our animals of today, it is logical to think that this applies to waters creatures of long ago. Now, for whatever reason, these creatures moved from the deep waters to more shallow water, and then moved to land. This didn't take so long as to where these creatures would evolve to smaller creatures to live in the shallow ocean, but fast enough so the gills would change to lungs. Now animals haven't been on land for millions of years, so the land must be full of plants. Since the animals are so huge, they need lots of food so they won't starve and die. This need is met due to huge amounts of untouched plant life. Since the plant eaters are huge, their is no need for the predators to shrink.

    I know it is logical to think that evenually, over millions of years, plant life would run out, but it wouldn't. It is said that the climate back then was much like today's swamps and rain forests, and in these areas, plants grow like weeds. So since plant life is constantly on the rise, animals don't need to shrink to be filled up. Also, these creatures don't need to be warm-blooded, for the constant hot temperatures give these creature a good body teperature.
    So for years, these creatures were huge do to the fact that there is plenty of plant life to sustain these creatures. But then something happens. An extinction level event occurs to kill these creatures. This tosses massive amounts of dust into the air that takes years to settle. This kills an equally massive amount of plant life. Now, an ice age downs, bringing with it new creatures to populate the earth. These creatures are of course smaller, because there is little plant life that can survive in the freezing ice age. Also, the predetors are smaller. And of course, these creatures are warm-blooded since cold-blooded creatures would die. This is my theory as of why dinosaurs were so much bigger.

    Factoid #1- The Blue Whale is the biggest animal to ever exist, much bigger than any other dinosaur.

    Comments

    • Do you even have have any idea about what you are talking? The 'logical' parts sound more like fairy tales...

      pareto

      by pareto on December 12th, 2005

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