Most mammals tend to be smaller in red-hot clime and enceinte in cold ones . This fact is know asBergmann ’s rule(or as I like to call it , Chihuahuafication ) . Now , with mood modification on the view , just how much will temperature put force per unit area on beast to evolve to a unlike size ? Here ’s what history teaches us .
55 million years ago , the Earth fit through a major blistering full stop bid the Paleocene - Eocene Thermal Maximum ( PETM ) , 175,000 years where the average temperature was up by about 10 ° F . During this geological period , the tiny ancestors of modern horseswent through a dramatic size variety , shrinking substantially , and then grow once the weather cool down .
Before the PETM , Sifrhippus sandrae weigh around 12 - pounds , about the size of a small hotdog . During this period of time of increased temperature , their mass quail by 30 % to 8.5 - pounds , around what a small cat weighs . Over the 45,000 years after that , they win that size back , bulking up by 75 % to 15 - pounds .
Some models of future mood modification are suggesting we ’ll soon be undergoing the same temperature alteration as the PETM , just on a massively accelerated fourth dimension - frame . There have even been some suggestionsthat mammal shrinkage is already happening . peradventure we will end up with house hippos and miniature camelopard after all .
[ Illustration by Danielle Byerley , Florida Museum of Natural History ]
Climate changeEvolutionPaleontologyScience
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