Mobile Menu Toggle

  • Kerala Travel Ideas
    • Adventure
    • Family
    • Friends & Group
    • Heritage
  • Resorts & Staycations
    • Mountain
    • Nature
    • Seaside & Beach
    • Budget
  • Tourist Places In kerala
    • Alappuzha
    • Ernakulam
    • Idukki
    • Kozhikode
  • About kerala
  • Travel Blogs
    • Travel
    • Food & Drinks
    • Kerala

 

 

 

Forgot password?
  • Kerala Travel Ideas
    • Adventure
    • Family
    • Friends & Group
    • Heritage
  • Resorts & Staycations
    • Mountain
    • Nature
    • Seaside & Beach
    • Budget
  • Tourist Places In kerala
    • Alappuzha
    • Ernakulam
    • Idukki
    • Kozhikode
  • About kerala
  • Travel Blogs
    • Travel
    • Food & Drinks
    • Kerala

  • HOME
  • Blog
  • Travel Posts
  • Autos
  • Food & Drinks
  • Health & Fitness
  • Gadgets

Sea creatures are getting BIGGER: Researchers say giants of the deep are larger than ever before

An enormous study involving past and present marine animals concluded that during evolution, bigger sea creatures always survive and they always have bigger chance of surviving.

According to the researchers, the average size of a marine animal has gone up by a factor of 150 in the past 542 million years. The researchers added that they saw a pattern of increasing body size meaning the bigger size, the better chance of survival.

How did they grow bigger?

The researchers based the assumption on Cope rule, a rule named after American fossil specialist Edward Drinker Cope. This means that animal lineage continues to gain weight as they evolve. For example, ancient horses were a lot smaller from horses that we have today. Ancient horses were dog-sized such as the Eohippus genus. There are some who grew bigger and went extinct like dinosaurs while some birds eventually became smaller but generally speaking, sea creatures became bigger.

Using their assumption of Cope’s rule, researcher Dr. Noel Heim, from Stanford University in California tried to cross reference it with marine animals.

For his study, Heim asked his colleagues and students to research for scientific record for body

size data of marine animals since paleontological times.

“We’ve had at least 50 high school students working on it over the last five years,” Dr Heim told BBC News.

The team recorded more than 17,000 groups of species, called genera. It represents 60 percent of all the animal genera in the world. They then input the size of the animals and their time of existence to a computer program and run simulations of how they could have evolved given a chance.

Different simulations were run with different scenarios such as tweaking some rules like the effect of other species to one another.

“The degree of increase in both mean and maximum body size just aren’t well explained by neutral drift,” said Dr Heim. “It appears that you actually need some active evolutionary process that promotes larger sizes.”

Dr. Heim added that their size could be the biggest reason why bigger animals survive better because they can move faster and can protect themselves against other predators.

In response to the study, Dr. Michael Berenbrink, an evolutionary physiologist at the University of Liverpool, said the US team had compiled “an incredible data set”.

More From Blog

10 Air Purifying Plants For Homes & Offices to Remove Harmful Toxins
Mars Once Had A Vast Ocean Covering One-Fifth Of Its Surface, New Research
Astronomers Discover Mysterious Black Hole As Massive As 12 Billion Suns
Sea creatures are getting BIGGER: Researchers say giants of the deep are larger than ever before
Study finds air pollution affects short-term memory, IQ and brain metabolic ratios
Four new fish species discovered in Kerala

Best Tourist Places in Kerala

  • Munnar
  • Nelliampathi
  • Thenmala
  • Vagamon
  • Ambukuthi Mala
  • Vembanad Lake
  • Kumbalangi
  • Kozhikode Beach
  • Kumbalangi
  • Mattancherry

Kerala Information

  • kerala Districts
  • Travel Posts
  • Kerala Arts
  • Blog Posts
  • kerala Festivals
  • Kerala Cuisines
  • Handicrafts
  • Kerala Tourism
  • Contact Us
  • Policies

Trending Locations

  • Pookode Lake
  • Silent Valley
  • Vythiri
  • Vazhachal
  • Kanthalloor
  • Wayanad
  • Athirapally
  • Poovar Beach
  • Kozhikode Beach
  • Malampuzha

Are you a Travel partner or want to list your property on our website? It is free!

REGISTER NOW