Species Are Evolving To Be Larger Over Time? Groundbreaking Study Proves 19th Century Theory

Species Are Evolving To Be Larger Over Time? Groundbreaking Study Proves 19th Century Theory



Scientists determined body size evolution can be predicted, and it looks like many species in Earth's oceans are getting bigger.

In what was considered to be one of the most comprehensive study of the evolution of body size ever conducted, researchers found support for Cope's rule, which states that animal lineages evolve to be larger over time, Stanford University reported.

"We've known for some time now that the largest organisms alive today are larger than the largest organisms that were alive when life originated or even when animals first evolved," said Jonathan Payne, a paleobiologist at Stanford School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences.

What researchers were not sure about was whether or not the average size of animals has been growing over time. The recent study shows over the past 542 million years, the mean size of marine animals has increased by whopping 150-fold.

"For reasons that we don't completely understand, the classes with large body size appear to be the ones that over time have become differentially more diverse," Payne said.

read on: http://www.hngn.com/articles/70908/20150219/species-are-evolving-to-be-larger-over-time-groundbreaking-study-proves-19th-century-theory.htm

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mudra

Evolution Makes Body Size Of Humans, Animals Grow: Stanford Researchers Prove Cope's Rule Right

A hypothesis by a 19th century paleontologist that body size in the lineage of any animal -- and that includes us humans -- increases over time through evolution has been confirmed in a new study.

First proposed by American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope, "Cope's Rule" holds that increasing body size in species is actively selected in evolution.

That's been confirmed in a Stanford University study reported in the journal Science, suggesting evolution does follow certain predictable rules -- one of them being a tendency for organisms to increase in size as they evolve.

"We've known for some time now that the largest organisms alive today are larger than the largest organisms that were alive when life originated or even when animals first evolved," says Stanford paleobiologist and study co-author Jonathan Payne.

There have been larger animals in the past, of course, like dinosaurs that evolved to be 85 feet in length, but the general principle holds that as any animal lineage evolves it tends to create ever larger specimens, as long as the environment, food sources and other factors are for the most part stable.

It's been true for humans; in Britain the average height of a 21-year-old man grew from 5 feet 5 inches in the 1870s to 5 feet 10 inches by the 1970s, research there has confirmed.

read on: http://www.techtimes.com/articles/34099/20150221/evolution-makes-body-size-of-humans-animals-grow-stanford-researchers-prove-copes-rule-right.htm

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mudra

This human bar graph shows how we've grown taller over 80 years



Above are two living histograms (or bar graphs) of the students at Connecticut State Agricultural College. A quick glance will show that the single largest group of students has dropped a couple of inches, from 5' 8'' to 5'6'', but that's because of the addition of women (who presumably don't always wear white), to the student body. The average height of men at the college has shifted up roughly three inches in eighty years. In science fiction stories, large body changes in the general population take genetic or technological intervention. It's interesting to get a reminder than just regular life can change the world profoundly in less than a century.

http://io9.com/5899665/this-human-bar-graph-shows-how-weve-grown-taller-over-80-years

Love Always
mudra