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 is large grown herbivores are our
best shot for 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 and
away 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 in
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 voracious predators of the dinosaur
world
hey big bomber how are you hungry 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 hoho
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 is large grown herbivores are our
best shot for 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 and
away 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 in
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 voracious predators of the dinosaur
world
hey big bomber how are you hungry 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 hoho
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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