isolation just as the isolation of
places like Australia have allowed
evolution to experiment in strange new
animals so the isolation of the new
continents could have caused the
dinosaurs to diverge normally we would
think that this might keep the dinosaurs
from getting big because the land areas
are getting smaller
but that’s not what happens they get
larger and larger isolation doesn’t
answer why anything would want to be
huge in the first place carrying around
that heavy load required sturdier limbs
and more energy here are animals that
are in many ways ten times bigger than
the biggest land animals today and yet
they must have been subject to the same
rules of physics that we have today
gravity hasn’t changed the atmosphere
hasn’t changed very much and so how do
they manage that they’re certainly
structurally capable of walking and
standing dr. Don Henderson looks to
modern animals for inspiration so to
study the largest land animals ever to
set foot on earth he takes a page from
the largest land animals on earth today
elephants I serve these large grown
herbivores are our best shot for the
sauropods being large may have benefits
large plant eaters can get from place to
place more efficiently because their
strides are huge but they may have
become big by necessity from the tough
to digest food they ate there weren’t
fruits and grasses like we have today
there was a lot of low quality very
woody plant material and that needs a
large digestive tract to process it and
to have a large digestive tract you need
a large body to carry it far annoy the
best reason for a prey animal to become
humongous may have less to do with
eating than with being eaten it becomes
virtually attack proof
if a lion is going to find a dinner it’s
not going to tackle some five-time
monster why not take a little 100
kilogram deer or something
it’s just all-around easier and safer
elephants are a great example once they
get past that first year of life 10
elephants really not susceptible to
predation anymore Lions just can’t kill
an adult elephant so it makes sense for
plant eaters to become enormous but why
didn’t carnivores remain the light agile
and for Asia’s predators of the dinosaur
world
hey big bomber how are you hungry huh
you hungry oh yeah look at that
paleo biologist dr. Greg Erickson also
studies gigantism but he studies it from
the other end of the food chain
the Predators animal like this can
generate 2,000 pounds of bite force oh
ho ho
imagine scaling this thing up to the
size of a trance or X it’s you know it’s
just mind-boggling to think about
crocodilians perfected their killing
ways back before dinosaurs arrived on
the scene so evolution hasn’t had to
tinker with their design much and the
st. Augustine Alligator Farm in Florida
is the perfect place to study them
it has every living species of
crocodilian from Dwarfs to giants like
dinosaurs
crocodiles evolved into bigger creatures
over time this is a skull of 160 million
year old crocodilian and one thing I
want you to notice is that the skull of
this animal is about the same size as
the head of this hatchling alligator
this is an interesting pattern that we
see in the fossil record time and time
again
members of the dinosauria members of the
crocodilia members of the Mammalia all
started off as very small organisms and
only later diversified into much larger
forms the new coyote size crocodilian
juncker suka s– illustrates the
principle as well it was only 1 metre
long but it’s super croc descendant was
12 times longer and happy to eat
gigantic dinosaurs
places like Australia have allowed
evolution to experiment in strange new
animals so the isolation of the new
continents could have caused the
dinosaurs to diverge normally we would
think that this might keep the dinosaurs
from getting big because the land areas
are getting smaller
but that’s not what happens they get
larger and larger isolation doesn’t
answer why anything would want to be
huge in the first place carrying around
that heavy load required sturdier limbs
and more energy here are animals that
are in many ways ten times bigger than
the biggest land animals today and yet
they must have been subject to the same
rules of physics that we have today
gravity hasn’t changed the atmosphere
hasn’t changed very much and so how do
they manage that they’re certainly
structurally capable of walking and
standing dr. Don Henderson looks to
modern animals for inspiration so to
study the largest land animals ever to
set foot on earth he takes a page from
the largest land animals on earth today
elephants I serve these large grown
herbivores are our best shot for the
sauropods being large may have benefits
large plant eaters can get from place to
place more efficiently because their
strides are huge but they may have
become big by necessity from the tough
to digest food they ate there weren’t
fruits and grasses like we have today
there was a lot of low quality very
woody plant material and that needs a
large digestive tract to process it and
to have a large digestive tract you need
a large body to carry it far annoy the
best reason for a prey animal to become
humongous may have less to do with
eating than with being eaten it becomes
virtually attack proof
if a lion is going to find a dinner it’s
not going to tackle some five-time
monster why not take a little 100
kilogram deer or something
it’s just all-around easier and safer
elephants are a great example once they
get past that first year of life 10
elephants really not susceptible to
predation anymore Lions just can’t kill
an adult elephant so it makes sense for
plant eaters to become enormous but why
didn’t carnivores remain the light agile
and for Asia’s predators of the dinosaur
world
hey big bomber how are you hungry huh
you hungry oh yeah look at that
paleo biologist dr. Greg Erickson also
studies gigantism but he studies it from
the other end of the food chain
the Predators animal like this can
generate 2,000 pounds of bite force oh
ho ho
imagine scaling this thing up to the
size of a trance or X it’s you know it’s
just mind-boggling to think about
crocodilians perfected their killing
ways back before dinosaurs arrived on
the scene so evolution hasn’t had to
tinker with their design much and the
st. Augustine Alligator Farm in Florida
is the perfect place to study them
it has every living species of
crocodilian from Dwarfs to giants like
dinosaurs
crocodiles evolved into bigger creatures
over time this is a skull of 160 million
year old crocodilian and one thing I
want you to notice is that the skull of
this animal is about the same size as
the head of this hatchling alligator
this is an interesting pattern that we
see in the fossil record time and time
again
members of the dinosauria members of the
crocodilia members of the Mammalia all
started off as very small organisms and
only later diversified into much larger
forms the new coyote size crocodilian
juncker suka s– illustrates the
principle as well it was only 1 metre
long but it’s super croc descendant was
12 times longer and happy to eat
gigantic dinosaurs
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