UC Santa Cruz study: High oxygen levels led to super-size bugs

[alp227]

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]

1. I have felt for a long time, that the dino dieout was because they grew too big

and the oxygen level fell. So, the lumbering beasts were first to go. That is why the rodent types remained.

[Odin2005]

2. That makes no sense. The dinos evolved when O2 levels were only 15%.

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.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. Um, this isn't exactly a new theory ...

http://walkingwith.wikia.com/wiki/Arthropleura

[Posteritatis]

4. I want a pet meganeura. (nt)