Where Were All the Tiny Dinosaurs? Scientists May Finally Have an Answer
Models suggest ecology, not physiology, kept non-avian dinosaurs from evolving truly tiny body sizes, while birds broke that limit through flight.
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3 Articles
Early mammals could have occupied ecological niches and prevented dinosaurs from developing tiny body sizes.
Where Were All the Tiny Dinosaurs? Scientists May Finally Have an Answer
For all their astonishing diversity, dinosaurs seem to have hit one evolutionary limit: they almost never became truly tiny. Tiny animals are everywhere in modern ecosystems, from mice and shrews to hummingbirds and geckos, yet dinosaurs seem to have left much of that miniature world unexplored. A new study suggests this missing miniature world cannot [...]
Dinosaurs became giants — so why did they never become tiny?
Scientists from the American Museum of Natural History and Princeton University have published findings examining why dinosaurs, despite reaching enormous proportions, apparently never evolved to become extremely small. The research, appearing in the journal Evolution, employed mathematical models to investigate how body size changed throughout vertebrate evolution. The contrast between ancient and modern animals is notable. The largest dinosaur…
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