Dinosaur Gigantism | How Did They Get So Huge?
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- Опубліковано 11 жов 2024
- The Sauropods were the largest group of dinosaurs... and they were gigantic! I wanted to figure out how they got so large compared to modern animals. This led me down a rabbit hole of fascinating facts about Sauropods, all of which i share with you in this video. Enjoy!
Email: Paleo.factus@gmail.com
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#dinosaur #dino #science #animals #biology
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Another theory is that because the plants eaten by the largest individuals were so low in nutrients, a larger size meant more calories and energy as bacterial fermentation was breaking down the plants. This probably also meant the youngest and smallest individuals had a different plant diet than the largest ones.
That's a great theory! Thanks for the comment mate!
Great video, mate, hope to watch more of them soon. 👍
I love your videos, this one was very informative and I loved the bunny chewing in the middle of it. You present in a very amusing manner which is great. Keep them coming mate.
Just a thought but what if the plants of the time were more nutrients dense than modern day plants? I heard that horse tails are better than grass when it comes nutrition except that its also toxic but they were much more diverse back then. So more nutrition=larger herbivores and if these plants were mire difficult to digest then just grow larger to house bigger and better organs and bacteria to digest it.
Very good question. I just did some research and some studies say that plants were in fact more nutritious during that time. I imagine that definitely contributed to the size of sauropods. Great point!
@@Paleofactus hey gains is gains but man only if we had plants like that in the modern era, i guess fruits count but its as numerous as an entire plant
Love this channel!
Mammals don’t grow that large as we don’t have hollow bones, and air sacs to support the massive frame. But, every form of life had it’s own “dragon” phases, or mega-fauna and flora forms. Mammals own “dragon age” was when we branched away from earlier reptiles, when synapsids were stem-mammals, and even then no specimens of them have revealed anything as staggering as a dinosaur, but with homologous structures and convergent evolution; there could have been, an early stem-mammal/reptile with enormous proportions, but it did not fossilize due to poor conditions for that process to occur.
Quite right! Its odd isn't it, the only animals who are theoretically capable of dinosaur sizes are their descendants, who decided they wanted to fly. And obviously their size is now limited by their need to take flight. So unless birds get bored of flying, we won't being seeing any dinosaur sized animals for a long time
I, personally, theorize that these genes and traits are only dormant, locked away, waiting until the exact right conditions of; competition, environment stressors to allow “adaptive radiation” to take place and allow a throwback, or a recollection in the ‘genetic memory’ of life forms. Eventually, “dinosaurs” may arise again, although they may not be exactly genetically right or a match to the lost ones, it’s the “toolbox” of genetic expressions. And, lifeforms that live in the crust, maybe even possibly to the upper mantle, would be unphased by surface extinction events… deep borrowing life, would be the most ancient theoretical organisms on earth (imagine Godzilla, or Weapons from Final Fantasy) essentially the immune responses of the sentient world.
One thing I've heard is that mammal size are limited by the womb, as the fetus has to be housed and carried around by the mother. With te egg-laying dinosaurs on the other hand, eggs didn't have to be carried around. Therefore the fetus could grow larger.
That sounds like a pretty good theory! Thanks for the comment! I'll do some research on this topic.
Idk The blue whale carries it on its womb and is still huge
Great video. Do you plan on covering Terror bird species? They're my favorite apex predator.
I do now!
Please they aren't theories, they are hypotheses. Getting these terms confused causes a lot of problems.
I love your videos, your channel is underrated, you deserve better for your efforts. But for what it's worth, I very much appreciate what you do!
That's very kind of you!! Thank you!
There's a large misconception about dinosaur gigantism.
Only a few species throughout time were giants, just like mammals.
Paleoxodon, an elephant species that went extinct a few thousand years ago, was larger than any theropoda dinosaur ever was, it was also probably as large as the largest ornithischian dinosaurs ever (ornithopods being the largest of this clade).
These extinct Paleoxodon probably maxed out at about the same size as the largest hornless rhinos.
Ornithopods, elephantidae and hornless rhinos all maxed out at about 20 tons, similarities in these unrelated groups is bones full of marrow and more importantly feeding method; they all chewed vegetation to help them digest plant material. Chewing is time consuming.
Theropoda maxed out at around 10 tons, they were only massive when compared to carnivores but this is probably because there was a lot of large prey to sustain their bulk.
The only stand outs in dinosauria were sauropoda, which had 4 legs, had hollow bones, had an airsac system to help cool down their body and most importantly they had a unique feeding method where a massive gut digested tough plant material, no need for time consuming Chewing.
Birds will NEVER reach even nonavian theropoda mass until they grow a bony tail in order to abandon their inefficient squatting posture.
Great stuff. I really like the information you put in this comment. For a while I've considered remaking this video as there's a lot I wish I had added to the conclusion. This comment will certainly change the way I approach that video. Thank you my friend.
@@Paleofactus I'm glad you enjoyed the comment. I made a similar comment in another page, about a year later they made a video mentioning sauropoda high calori intake thanks to not chewing.
They didn't mention the bird portion which I think it'll be cool to see in a video, maybe showing a trex pic with no tail to demonstrating how it would be too front heavy.
I've seen many people assume birds, the modern dinosaurs, are small because of non sense like gravity or atmosphere differences.
They dont realize birds lived along side the dinosaurs for tens of millions of years and were still small back then, with the largest bird ever actually living just a few thousand years ago, and due to its posture it was still smaller than some bison. The elephant bird put so much pressure on it's femur bone that the actual bone was almost as wide at its widest point as it was in length.
Another factor is that they were reptiles Reptiles have some of the most unstoppable growthspan out of any organism which also leads to the massive growth of the sairapods.
No, they were not all reptiles. Modern thinking is that a lot of dinosaurs were warm-blooded. Think about it birds aren't cold-blooded.
@@davidnorton2473Reptiles can be warm blooded
@@davidnorton2473And if used the same way phylogenetic classifications are used, birds would be reptiles too
Stegosaurus?
Gravity changed. The earth used to be much smaller, the continents all fit together on a smaller globe and the oceans are all relatively young compared to the land.
That isn't at all true. Earth was almost exactly the same size and had the same amount of water when the dinosaurs were around
4
That's an awesome number!
whales giraffes elephants rinis etc all these animals were bigger than 96 percent of all animals so your theory is wrong
Not big enough
I love both the facts you make sure to include and the theories you mention. they actually give me a lot of thoughts on the matter like the fact that being so big might have a Godzilla like effect and make you clumsier. I’ve never really seen it depicted much out of obscure cases but bigger things seem to also have a harder time moving around like you said, maybe any reoccurring damage seen in the big boy’s fossils could show this, though they were strong, so I think the injuries would not only heal quick but be too subtle of a scar to really tell it’s there. Man I love ancient creatures