Why Were Dinosaurs So Big?
| Most of us are fascinated with dinosaurs because of their huge size. Plant eating dinosaurs like the Brachiosaurus weighed over 50 tons while a Tyrannosaurus Rex was around 7 to 8 tons. |
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Like all dinosaur enthusiasts, we all want to know why were the dinosaurs so big. There are numerous theories that try to explain the sheer size of the dinosaurs and we will look at some of the theories.
- One theory concludes that the dinosaurs grew so huge because of the vegetation. In the Mesozoic Era, around 250 million years ago, the level of carbon dioxide in the air was much higher than what it is today. This means that the atmospheric temperatures were also high. Coupled with high levels of carbon dioxide and high temperatures, the plant life flourished. This provided the dinosaurs with ample nourishment leading to them becoming large.
- There are some paleontologists who believe that dinosaurs grew so huge to protect themselves against predators and thereby taking an evolutionary advantage. Many people believe this theory because there is evidence that a T-Rex would scavenge for food rather than hunting for it.
- Researchers who study plant eating dinosaurs have concluded that there were cold blooded. This conclusion was drawn based on the rate of metabolism that the dinosaurs were presumed to have. If they were warm blooded, the dinosaurs would have cooked themselves from inside. This led the paleontologists to suggest that these large dinosaurs had found a way to regulate their own body temperature. Researchers explained that by being so large, these cold blooded reptiles would have warmed up and cool down very slowly, thereby having a constant body temperature. Therefore, the largeness was a byproduct of being cold blooded.
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