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Do Thunderbeasts Prove Giant Animals Are Inevitable?
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558,700 Views • Oct 24, 2023 • Click to toggle off description
The Eons Calendar: store.dftba.com/collections/eons

The journey the thunder beasts took to reach such mega proportions from such humble beginnings forces us to ask an important question, one that paleontologists have been asking for more than a century: from an evolutionary perspective, is bigger always better?

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Views : 558,700
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Date of upload: Oct 24, 2023 ^^


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RYD date created : 2024-05-17T03:48:58.765122Z
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YouTube Comments - 829 Comments

Top Comments of this video!! :3

@eons

6 months ago

You can get the 2024 Eons calendar here! store.dftba.com/collections/eons

40 |

@MorgottTheGraceGiven

6 months ago

It’s honestly really cool to think about how we’re living at the same time as the largest mammal (blue whale) and the smallest dinosaur (hummingbird) to ever exist!

2.1K |

@timeshark8727

6 months ago

There is also a preservation bias towards large, thick-boned, animals. Animals below a certain size only leave traces under very specific conditions, their remains just don't last long enough for gradual burial.

372 |

@Tungdil_01

6 months ago

Hey PBS Eons crew, one suggestion: when you display the references, I recommend using the DOI link rather than the webpage. The reason is that the DOI is said to be 'eternal', while the journal webpage can change for multiple reasons. So by using the DOI link, in the future people will still be able to see the references. Great video!

562 |

@kweassa6204

6 months ago

I think it can also be said that we're actually "giants" ourselves. When compared to most of the animal kingdom, we're actually pretty huge. Larger fauna like horses, cows, deers, elephants and other carnivores leave a striking impression to us and we feel that we're not all that large and powerful, but even when limited to just our own mammal kingdom we're one of the largest animals out there.

226 |

@invisiblejaguar1

6 months ago

I've recently come to think of 'therium' being the mammalian version of the dinosaur/reptile 'saurus'. These do well for naming any species of mammal or dinosaur in standard cases.

106 |

@blackburned

6 months ago

Blake is such an incredible host. He covers the material is such an understandable way and has a great sense of humor. I got a good chuckle that Kallie made Blake say he says "Honey I shrunk the wife" when he didn't want to 😂 the whole team is so funny

131 |

@dier7144

6 months ago

It’s absolutely crazy to think at the same time we have one of largest animals ever to exist but we also have some of the smallest animals compared to other time periods

780 |

@kyle857

6 months ago

Big animals are niche specialists. Animals getting bigger until their niche collapses, then other animals grow and specilaize to fill it till the same thing happens again.

7 |

@apnosaurus

6 months ago

Most people probably have heard Brontosaurus was really Apatosaurus, however a 2014 study found enough diagnostic characteristics to revive the genus, and it did so completely by accident. Not everyone agrees with this paper, but for now Brontosaurus is a distinct genus.

124 |

@Rich4098

6 months ago

Here's my theory according to many computer games regarding evolution I've played. Bigger is always better when the environment is stable, but if the environment changes there is a greater risk of sudden extinction. Smaller animals can usually adapt more quickly for various reasons, including that they almost always reproduce at a much higher rate.

96 |

@mrsanity

6 months ago

There's some element of preservation bias in the number of bigger animals in the record, plus some habitats in which larger sizes become a hinderance after a certain point are also very bad at producing the conditions for fossilisation. There's likely a whole bunch of sheep sized brontotheres that left no trace for example.

24 |

@gwenpoole1071

6 months ago

Watching Blake crack himself up always kills me 🤣🤣🤣 especially when he laughs at sillier jokes than most of the other hosts but then pretends to be unmoved by their puns 🤣

26 |

@pteranodon6612

6 months ago

Being bigger allows the animals to enter ecological niches that would otherwise be impossible. Like being able to move heavy objects to gain access to food. The main drawback is that big animals are much more likely to go extinct during a long period of food scarcity.

23 |

@kevincronk7981

6 months ago

Edward Drinker Cope has had my favorite name I've heard in a while, I did not expect a video about him without anyone breaking out into laughter

5 |

@widodoakrom3938

6 months ago

Bigger than means required more resources to survived

55 |

@jakobraahauge7299

6 months ago

Personally I follow Cope's rule - but I'm also from such an ancient lineage that scrawny was in vogue, when I was young

18 |

@davidnotonstinnett

6 months ago

I think size is an “easy” thing for natural selection to make happen, but that smaller animals can out-compete them if they use social structures.

27 |

@wezul

6 months ago

From what I've found online, there is a benefit to being bigger in the form of energy conservation. At least for ectothermic animals. Small animals lose heat to their surroundings faster than large ones, and large animals need proportionally less food per pound of body weight to live. So if you were designing an animal from scratch to be as efficient as possible, bigger may indeed be better. I would LOVE a more in-depth exploration of this topic though!!

7 |

@jacquesbaker1557

6 months ago

One interesting exception to this rule is how Modern American Bison shrank as they evolved from their direct ancestor the Stepp Bison at the end of the last ice age shortly before the Stepp Bison became extinct.

12 |

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