{"id":27291,"date":"2023-05-08T17:00:54","date_gmt":"2023-05-08T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sciencefocus.com\/?p=143436"},"modified":"2023-05-08T17:37:11","modified_gmt":"2023-05-08T15:37:11","slug":"size-matters-breakthrough-study-reveals-how-super-massive-dinosaurs-got-so-big","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/rss_feed\/size-matters-breakthrough-study-reveals-how-super-massive-dinosaurs-got-so-big\/","title":{"rendered":"Size matters: Breakthrough study reveals how super-massive dinosaurs got so big"},"content":{"rendered":"

The sauropods were the largest animals to ever walk on earth \u2013 a new study reveals their evolutionary journey. <\/p>

By Noa Leach\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Monday, 08 May 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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Back when our ancestors were just little rats crawling along the floors of prehistoric forests, super-giant dinosaurs<\/a> browsed the tops of the treelines \u2013 but how, and when, did they get so big?<\/p>\n

Palaeontologists at Adelphi University, USA, have figured out that sauropods (the group of dinosaurs that became the largest animals to ever walk on land) grew to their exceptional sizes so that they could fill available niches \u2013 and they did this by evolving<\/a> many more times than previously thought.<\/p>\n

Rather than changing their sizes just one or two times throughout evolutionary history, Dr Michael D\u2019Emic<\/a>, an associate biology professor at Adelphi, discovered that individual sauropod species in fact evolved as many as 36 times over 100 million years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no one key factor, event, or evolutionary innovation that led to sauropods becoming the largest animals ever to walk the earth,\u201d D\u2019Emic told BBC Science Focus<\/em>. \u201cInstead, it seems that it was \u2018right place, right time, right circumstances\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Each of the sauropods were ecologically distinct from one another, with different teeth, heads and bodies. This shows they were all able to find a form where they could live without competing with one another.<\/p>\n

The study, published in Current Biology<\/em>, contradicts the theory that animals\u2019 sizes evolve over time \u2013 instead showing that sauropods were already giant early on in their evolutionary journey.<\/p>\n

D\u2019Emic calculated this by estimating the body mass of around 200 sauropod species based on their limb dimensions, before mapping these masses onto the group\u2019s evolutionary tree.<\/p>\n

Sauropods: fun facts<\/h4>\n
Sauropods had air-filled bodies to get larger without the mass \u2013 it made their breathing more efficient, too.<\/li>\n
They laid eggs: spending less time on parenting meant they had more energy to grow.<\/li>\n
Unlike dinosaurs like velociraptors<\/a>, sauropods had small teeth and a good gut. This meant they could chew less and ferment their own food \u2013 saving time and making them able to process food efficiently so they could eat lots without moving too much. Also, smaller heads equal longer necks.<\/li>\n<\/ul>
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The study\u00a0reveals that with each new sauropod family that emerged, at least one lineage independently became super-giant. The iconic long-necked Brachiosaurus, which grew up to 30m long, was one of these \u2013 as well as the chunky 21m long Apatosaurus.<\/p>\n
The first sauropods were about six metres long and weighed around 800kg (about the same as an average rhino). The biggest evolved to be over 30m, like the Brachiosaurus, and weigh as much as 60,000kg (about 15 average African elephants). That\u2019s like humans evolving to five times our height, or 75 times<\/em> our weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s important to note that some sauropods evolved to be smaller \u2013 the smallest would have been around 15 feet [4.6 metres] long and barely the weight of a bull,\u201d says D\u2019Emic.<\/p>\n
In fact, the next steps for this research will be explaining why certain lineages became super-giant while others didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
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