Botany among dinosaurs. Scientists explain how sauropods got so big

A new study sheds light on how the world’s most gigantic animals managed to reach such heights.

Science Focus writes that at a time when our distant ancestors were tiny creatures no bigger than a mouse and crawling through the “carpets” of prehistoric forests, supergiant dinosaurs began to crawl through the treetops with might and substance.

In a new study, paleontologists at Adelphi University in the US have focused on understanding how and when giant dinosaurs got so large. Note that sauropods (a group of the largest dinosaurs) are the largest animals to have roamed the Earth. Researchers have focused on uncovering their evolutionary paths and now believe their incredible achievement is that they are not too lazy to evolve.

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Co-author of the study and professor of biology at Adelphi, Dr. According to Michael D’Emic, he and his colleagues discovered that instead of changing their size once or twice throughout their entire evolutionary history, these hardworking dinosaurs did it dozens of times. times. For example, some have evolved 36 times in 100 million years.

The researchers note that sauropods are physiologically different from each other, with distinct teeth, heads and bodies. So actually each of them managed to find a form that helped them survive and not compete with each other. As a result of the study, the scientists also disproved the theory that sauropods became giants over time – the results of the study show that they were giants at the beginning of their evolutionary path.

In the study, the scientists estimated the body weight of about two hundred sauropod species based on the size of their limbs. Next, the data was applied to the group’s evolutionary tree. The results of the study show that with the arrival of each new sauropod family, at least one lineage independently became supergiant. For example, the iconic long-necked Brachiosaurus that reached 30 meters in length and the stocky 21-meter-long Apatosaurus were among them.

The researchers found that the first sauropods reached a length of about 6 meters and weighed about 800 kilograms. The largest, Brachiosaurus, evolved to reach over 30 meters and weigh up to 60,000 kilograms. By the way, scientists, on the contrary, discovered that some sauropods in the process of evolution got smaller – for example, the smallest reached 4.6 meters.

In future research, scientists plan to focus on understanding why some sauropod lineages are supergiant while others are not.

Previously Focus He wrote that scientists have found how giant dinosaurs moved to avoid falling.

Source: Focus

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