I read an interesting article about mammal diversification and gigantism that took place after the dinosaurs kicked off. I've always thought it was cool how certain species trend toward huge size as they elbow the competition out of an ecological niche. Or an ecological corridor in the case of something like Indricotherium or Deinotherium. Amazing creatures.
Scale illustration of Indricotherium with a modern African elephant and a human. These guys were getting up toward the general size of a respectable sauropod dinosaur. All that mammals needed was room to spread their wings, so to speak.
Deinotherium was a far larger animal than I had known before I read the recent articles about the early explosion of size in terrestrial mammals.
Hanging out with a tame hadrosaur a couple of weeks ago. Being careful not to step in the dinosaur poop lying around.
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