Search results for "Saurischia"
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Biology of the sauropod dinosaurs: the evolution of gigantism
2010
The herbivorous sauropod dinosaurs of the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods were the largest terrestrial animals ever, surpassing the largest herbivorous mammals by an order of magnitude in body mass. Several evolutionary lineages among Sauropoda produced giants with body masses in excess of 50 metric tonnes by conservative estimates. With body mass increase driven by the selective advantages of large body size, animal lineages will increase in body size until they reach the limit determined by the interplay of bauplan, biology, and resource availability. There is no evidence, however, that resource availability and global physicochemical parameters were different enough in the Mesozoic to ha…
L'arbre de la vie a-t-il une structure fractale?
1999
Abstract We analyse the time sequences of major evolutionary leaps at various scales, from the scale of the global tree of life, to the scales of orders and families such as sauropod dinosaurs, North American fossil Equidae, rodents, and primates including the Hominidae. In each case we find that these data are consistent with a log- periodic law to high level of statistical significance. Such a law is characterized by a critical epoch of convergence Tc specific to the lineage under consideration and that can be interpreted as the end of that lineage's capacity to evolve.