How come in general evolutionary ancestors of most living species were bigger?
Megalodon > sharks
Sabre tooth etc > lions, tigers
Prehistoric birds > modern birds
Mammoths > elephants
Ancient crocodiles > modern
Moore’s law of evolved design miniaturization?
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Ocean and island animals are considered exceptions iirc.
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That doesn’t affect max size inference. It’s obvious that the largest big cats in the past were larger than the largest ones today, regardless of smaller ones whose fossils didn’t survive for eg
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Seems more like survivor bias: bigger animals are more likely to fossilize and/or we like to talk about them more.
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Most of the megafauna go extinct during major extinction events, also humans and their ancestors killed off most of the biggest game during the last couple million years
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Darwin: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.” You need to analyze what advantage there is to being big. The advantage needs to be dinamic as the environment changes.
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