Science
Related: About this forumUC Santa Cruz study: High oxygen levels led to super-size bugs
Irked by irritating insects? Be glad you didn't live in the late Carboniferous period.
Three hundred million years ago, jumbo bugs zipped along with 2-foot-wide wingspans -- nearly the size of a crow's. Now, scientists think they know the secrets to their super size: Sky high oxygen levels and no hungry birds.
The enormous insect Meganeura or griffinfly reigned in the late Paleozoic era -- about 70 million years before dinosaurs tromped around. Now extinct, their fossils reveal a bug resembling current-day dragonflies.
"They're related to dragonflies; they're sort of like their uncles," said paleobiologist Matthew Clapham of UC Santa Cruz.
full: http://www.mercurynews.com/rss/ci_20781095
WingDinger
(3,690 posts)and the oxygen level fell. So, the lumbering beasts were first to go. That is why the rodent types remained.
Odin2005
(53,521 posts)Dinosaurs had the same high-performance respiratory system their bird descendants have, and it's thought it was originally an adaptation to low oxygen levels in the Triassic and Jurassic.