NONTHABANHAN 1!

Nathawadee Nonni Nonthabanhan

Ms. Orana Meenongwha

English 10/1006

May 25, 2017

The Evolution of Large Animals

Introduction

It is not easy being small in the ancient time. Many mammals tend to develop bigger in
size overtime. So, they can fight with predators and find food resources easier. Aaron Clauset of
the Santa Fe Institute and Douglas Erwin of the National Museum of Natural History in
Washington, D.C., had created the most accurate high technology computer to shoe and predict
how much mammals had changed in size over a period of time. He used the fossil information
from about 60 million years to explain the shape and size of those mammal's predecessor,
comparing to mammals nowadays.
For example the dragonfly. A dragonfly is an insect with a scientific name Anisoptera.
Adult dragonflies have a characteristic of large multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong
transparent wings, sometimes with coloured patches and an elongated body. Which we usually
sees them around grassland and actually everywhere it have a large, grassy space. In an ancient
time theres dragonfly named Meganeura is believe to exist approximately 300 millions years
ago. This creature's both wings got a size of 65 centimeters and that's mean they are 4.5 times
bigger than dragonflies. And they actually evolve into dragonflies these days.
Thus, many species, not only with mammals, they are evolved and decreasing in size.
There's a idea that said, when organisms are evolving, extinction seems to favor the small. Just
think about dinosaur, there're gigantic, and they already extinct. Those mammals, fishes, and
small creatures evolved to what they are today. The larger the body size, the more likely that
specie will go to extinction. Do you even know that in the dinosaur era the dragonfly got a
gigantic predecessor. Some scientist predicted that the larger number of the specie, the bigger
they are. There're another fact that being gigantic is harder for the predators to kill it and easier
for the specie to escape from the attackers. So it means being big in the ancient time is good, and
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actually many species nowadays used to be in a very gigantic size. Therefore all the information
on this paper, will show you how mammals evolved and why they have smaller body size
through time.

Mammals

Mammoth must be the first ancient creature when you think about mammals in the

old days. But in the way back in the dinosaur age, there is no mammal at all. The reptiles took

the control. Unexpectedly, 65 million years ago, heres go the first mammal. The first mammals

evolved from Therapsids or mammal-like reptiles at the end of the Triassic period and live

together with dinosaurs throughout the Mesozoic Era. The first mammals evolved from their

tiny, mouselike forms into the various species that inhabit the world today. Dinosaurs tended to

be very, very big and early mammals tended to be very, very small. According to the fossils, the

first mammals were tiny, inoffensive creatures, have a size of few inches long and a few ounces

in weight. They eat insects and small reptiles, which bigger raptors and tyrannosaurs tended to

ignore. They could also live on trees or dig into burrows to avoid getting stomped on by larger

ornithopods and sauropods, which are those giant herbivore dinosaurs and those small heads

with spikes on their back. Female mammals hold milk-producing mammary glands with which

they breastfeed their young. Most mammals have hair or fur and all of them are warm-blooded

metabolisms. In terms of the fossil record, paleontologists, or scientist who are specialized in

fossil of animals and plants. They can distinguish the traits that mammals get from their parents

and from the reptiles by the shape of their skull and neck bones. In mammals, the two small

bones in the inner ear, but in reptiles, these bones constitute part of the jaw. Lets get to the age

that mammals took controls. About 65 and a half million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous

period, dinosaurs, the largest, most scary creatures ever to rule the planet, died off in huge
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quantities. This disaster are named K/T Extinction. Those tiny mammals survived the disaster.

Then same characteristics that helped mammals maintain a low profile during the Mesozoic Era

also allowed them to survive the K/T Extinction Event that doomed the dinosaurs. Theres no

more giant scary dinosaurs to eat them anymore, so they started to evolve, in a bigger and bigger

size. Heres go the mammals era. Mammals were free to spread into open ecological niches, in

many cases taking on the general shape of their dinosaur predecessors, like giraffes, as you may

have noticed, are strangely similar in body plan to ancient sauropods like Brachiosaurus, and

other mammalian megafauna seems to have similar evolutionary paths.

Reptiles and Amphibians

By definition, the Reptiles includes turtles, lizards, snakes, crocodilians and birds,

their last common forefather and all of what they passed through generation. We all know how

the old story goes, fish evolved into tetrapods, tetrapods evolved into amphibians, and

amphibians evolved into reptiles. Reptiles begins approximately 300 million years ago during

the Carboniferous period or about 360 to 290 million years ago. By the Triassic period, they

began to rule the land of the world. Reptiles succeed in adapting to deserts, swamps, forests,

grasslands, rivers, lakes, and even the air and seas. Then Amphibians were born too. They started

to move from water to land through time. They represent "transitional" fossils. The fossil shows

how the creature move from water to land, by looking at their body structure. They show

features from two different species, one is the lobe-finned fish, the tetrapod, meaning "four-

limbed creature The most famous gigantic reptile or dinosaur that everyone should know,

Tyrannosaurus-Rex or T-rex. The Dinosaur T-rex was one of the greatest predators that ever

lived. Tyrannosaurus Rex means 'Tyrant Lizard and theyre one of the biggest meat eaters. They

lived about 65 to 70 million years ago in the late cretaceous period. T-rex had quite a large brain
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for a dinosaur. This would have helped it hunt better. Large parts of its brain helped its vision

and smell it may have even had telescopic vision. Even more terrifying was its mouth full of 8

inch teeth, theyre long and sharp, just like knives. Tyrannosaurus Rex were meat eaters. They

probably hunted Hadrosaurs and Triceratops or the plant eaters. As the number of mammals

increased, most reptilian groups or the dinosaurs became later extinct. Some unnoticeable

reptiles finally passed the traits to turtles, tuataras, lizards, snakes, amphibians or worm lizard,

and the crocodiles. Through all the evolution activity, the turtles continued their slowest

evolution steps, changing very little in basic structure.

Insects

Insects, are a class in the phylum Arthropoda. Insects are the largest group of

animals on earth so far, about 926,400 different species have been founded. Estimates of the

total number of species, from 2 million to 30 million. New species of insects are continually

being found, there are more insects than all other kinds of animals. Insects have six legs and

most have wings. Insects were the first animals that have the ability to fly. Insects live all over

the planet: almost all are terrestrial live on land. Few insects live in the oceans or in very cold

places, such as Antarctica. The most species live in tropical areas. Insects have exoskeletons ,

which are skeletons on the outside. Their skeletons are made out of thin, hard pieces like the

armor and they are made of chitin. All together, these pieces make a hard layer around the

insects body. The exoskeleton protects the insect. The body of an insect has three main parts, a

head, a thorax or chest, and an abdomen or the stomach. On the head are an insects many eyes,

its two antennae which they uses to feel and smell things and the last on is its mouth. On the

thorax, insects have wings and legs. All insects have six legs, those three pairs of jointed legs
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and usually have four wings, or two pairs. The abdomen or the stomach part is the back part of

the insect. Inside the abdomen is the stomach, the heart, and the excretory system where body

wastes got out of the insect. Bees also have a stinger at the back of the abdomen. This is one

example of the gigantic insect in the dinosaur time, the 2 meters centipede called Arthropleura.

Arthropleura was a specie of giant arthropod, related to centipedes and millipedes that lived in

North America and Scotland during the Carboniferous period, between about 340 and 280

million years ago. It is the largest known land invertebrate of all time, and was between 1 and 8

feet long or 0.3 to 2.6 meters. It was able to grow so large, because at the time it lived, there was

a higher oxygen in the air than today, and there was also few carnivores that eat them. So they

lived almost everywhere in north America and Scotland.

CONCLUSION

To summary, as you can see, all the living things changed their shapes, behavior or diet.

The word Evolution is a theory, an idea with lots of evidence. It explains why animals and plants

are so good at surviving in their environments, the places where they live. What it means is that

a species changes over time and can even split in two new species. The theory of evolution was

discovered by Charles Darwin in 1859. He said that evolution worked through natural selection.

Natural selection means that some individuals in a species are better at surviving than others and

will have more children. Evolution says that all living things are related. This means that if will

go back far enough in time, all animals, all plants and every other living thing, had one ancestor.

Evolution led to that one species becoming many more until today when we have millions.
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References

Bob Strauss (March 31, 2017), The K/T Extinction Event - The Asteroid Impact that Doomed
the Dinosaurs Retrieved from

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-k-t-extinction-event-1092141

Bob Strauss (April 20, 2017), The First Reptiles - The Ancestral Reptiles of the Carboniferous
and Permian Periods Retrieved from
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-first-reptiles-1093767

aaronfaunch (March 12, 2013), What is Inheritance? Retrieved from

https://scienceforthekids.wordpress.com/tag/evolution/

Bob Strauss (March 31, 2017), The first Mammals Retrieved from

https://www.thoughtco.com/the-first-mammals-1093311

(2004) Prehistoric Wildlife - Athropleura Retrieved from

http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/a/arthropleura.html

Facts of Tyrannosaurus Rex Dinosaurs for Kids (N/A) Retrieved from

http://www.kids-dinosaurs.com/dinosaur-t-rex.html
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Appendix