Hundreds of millions of years ago, a group of dinosaurs dominated the earth. Most of them have the gigantic size. However, once extinct, no more animals are have jumbo sized.
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| A T-rex at the Natural History Museum: A new study claims that the biology of dinosaurs was skewed towards big species, with many more mammoth examples than among today's animals. (Picture from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/) |
The experts found the answer to why the dinosaurs became gigantic ancient animals than vertebrates in the modern era. According to them, the dinosaur is not only the largest animal to ever roam the earth. Dinosaurs also has many species tefaih size larger than all other vertebrate in their time.
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| Frequency distribution of body size for eight groups: (a) extinct dinosaurs; (b) extant birds; (c) extant reptiles; (d) extant amphibians; (e) extant fish; (f) extant mammals; (g) extinct pterosaurs; (h) Cenozoic mammals. (Picture from: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/) |
Their findings explain how life on earth as long as there are dinosaurs look very different. The proportion of large and small animals in ancient times was very different from the present.
"In ancient times, there are few small animals," said David Hone of Queen Mary University of London, England, on December 27, 2012. He and his colleague, Eoin Gorman, comparing the size of the femur 329 different species of dinosaurs from the fossil record.
In the world of paleontology, the analysis of the length and weight of the femur is a valid method to estimate the body mass of dinosaurs. The results of this analysis are brought Hone and Gorman to the conclusion that dinosaurs had body size distribution pattern in the opposite compared to other vertebrate species.
For example in modern mammals tend encountered fewer large species than smaller animals. For example, species of elephant than mice. But the fossil record indicated the opposite trend in the age of dinosaurs are still alive.
Hone said the tendency to have more large-bodied species appeared to develop quite early in the evolution of dinbsaurus, which occurred about 225 million years ago in the Late Triassic period.
"Young Dinosaurs occupy different ecological niches than their parents so competitive over food the same," he said. Young dinosaurs tend to eat plants or smaller animals. *** [DAILY MAIL | MAHARDIKA SATRIA HADI | KORAN TEMPO 4101]
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