I understand that in Carboniferous era insects were big because of oxygen but what about other creatures?
Why were some dinos as big as whales? Why were a lot of them many times bigger than elephants? How does it work? If mammals reigned in those eras instead of dinos and insects, would they also be this gigantic compared to modern ones? (Like gigantic sloth but 5 times the size of it?)
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I don’t think there is enough evidence in fossil record to give you a great one line answer. However animals are all pushed by the wind of evolution. So there must be a selection pressure favouring bigness, and while higher oxygen might explain the how, it is possible it doesn’t explain why for any species…. not a dinosaurologist but I think the prevailing thought is that bigger herbivores make harder targets. So the bigger you were the harder you were to take down. At the same time you would be a bigger meal when you did die. So there is probably some hunter/scavenger balance right there.
Thr point is that the hammer of evolution on the anvil of time had been working on the predators/prey of dinosaurs for a long time. And giantisim seems to be a solution until John Hammond gives us one we won’t ever know exactly what the selection pressure was that pushed them so big. But it worked that’s all we really know
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