Posted on 08/31/2010 10:12:05 AM PDT by Frenchtown Dan
A new University of Florida study indicates extinct carnivorous mammals shrank in size during a global warming event that occurred 55 million years ago.The study, scheduled to appear in the December print edition of the Journal of Mammalian Evolution and now available online, describes a new species that evolved to half the size of its ancestors during this period of global warming.
The hyena-like animal, Palaeonictis wingi, evolved from the size of a bear to the size of a coyote during a 200,000-year period when Earth's average temperature increased about 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Following this global warming event, Earth's temperature cooled and the animal evolved to a larger size.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Good, more meat for me.
COLD not warm is the shrinkage trigger...just ask George
Wow. So in another 200,000 years our temperature might go up another 15 degrees? It will kill us! We will all be dead! Oh, wait...
The only physical force that can shrink the size of living organisms is gravity, not temperature. Shoosh, and I didn’t go to an Ivy League school.
Hah! Think Gravity will shrink Algore?
Natural selection, survival of the fittest. The smaller ones survived needing less to eat, so the species became smaller.
But I think you know that.
Hah! Think Gravity will shrink Algore?
Natural selection, survival of the fittest. The smaller ones survived needing less to eat, so the species became smaller.
But I think you know that.
George?
I’m missing something there.
But cold is what creates larger species - Mammoths, cave bears, huge wolves, etc.
Yeah, we’re all gonna be dust anyway, but its nice to know that the earth ain’t gonna sizzle anytime soon.
OK...natural selection aside, who was driving SUVs and farming cattle 55 million years ago?
What? There was global warming before the internal combustion engine and coal fired power plants?
Just damn.
George "I was in the pool...I was in the pool...!!!" Costanza.
But cold is what creates larger species...
"Create" might be stretching it. There is a selection advantage to being larger in cold climates, as the surface area to volume ratio is decreased.
Well 60 million years ago was the last great extinction (70 - 80%) from a comet or asteroid (or so we’ve been told), so I don’t thnk there was too much around 55 million years ago.
We have more of a threat from radical muslims than we do from global warming.
Yeah, and a lot worse than what we are told we are having now. And followed by an ice age!
Ok.
I never watched Seinfeld very much.
Some pretty good stuff. There was an Aussie at a place where I was working and one of the smart-asses there was doing the "Maybe the dingo ate your baby..." schtick. The guy looked a little perplexed. I asked him what he thought of a society based solely on television. That amused him.
Seinfield was okay..nothing spectacular :-)
The same phenomenon attributed to island-dwelling animals of a given species vs. their mainland counterparts.
Seinfeld is possibly the most overrated program in the history of television.
Yes, I’ve read that also.
Islands with pygmy elephants and others.
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