Ever wondered why land animals are so small today? Fossil fossils have shown us that many dinosaurs were huge and massive monsters, and they only grew larger over millions of years. Modern mammals, on the other hand, are very small. Elephants are big, yes, but this is rather an exception. Who's guilty? Of course people.
The fact is that people continue to kill large animals.
Why are all animals so small?
A new study by a group of researchers from several American universities has clarified that humans are the main reason why modern animals are so tiny compared to animals of the past. The research was published in Science.
“There have been animals on Earth that weighed over 10 tons,” says Felisa Smith, a paleoecologist at the University of New Mexico and co-author of the study. “And today the largest animal is an elephant, which weighs on average three times less. And if they die out, there will be no animals weighing more than 900 kilograms. And this is the maximum size. On average, the dimensions are much smaller."
After dinosaurs, creatures as large as woolly rhinos, mastodons, and giant sloths the size of an elephant roamed the earth. These examples of "megafauna" began to evaporate at exactly the same time that human ancestors left Africa. Scientists have linked the large-scale extinction of large mammals and the emergence of human ancestors with insatiable appetites.
Sadly, this trend is not going to be interrupted. Perhaps we will gradually exterminate all the animals and only the smallest will remain, to which the gluttonous person does not care.
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“If we don’t handle this, there will be nothing more than a cow on Earth,” Smith says. "It depresses me."
Ilya Khel
