A new computer model might explain why some animals shrink over time while others grow. It has to do a lot with their habitat and resource availability.
"Where direct competition is less, sizes tend to get bigger, even though being big and few in number can make animals more vulnerable to dying out – such as what happened with the dinosaurs," said Shovonlal Roy, study lead author who specialized in ecosystem modeling at the University of Reading, in a press release. The study was published in Communications Biology.
The dinosaurs most likely were their gigantic size because they had less competition. However, their size was also their downfall. As animals get bigger, they are more susceptible to dying out, explained Roy in a statement.
Once the dinosaurs were wiped out, other species (like mammals) could roam Earth freely, have access to food and other resources, and could evolve bigger bodies.
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