“I joke about this all the time — we’re going to be walking around 3 feet tall if we keep going the way we’re going.”
Bloomberg reports:
Global warming 50 million years ago caused the first horses, already tiny in stature compared with present-day animals, to shrink 30 percent to about 8.5 pounds, the size of a house cat today, a study suggests.
Later, as the climate cooled, the horse called Sifrhippus began to grow in size, according to research in the journal Science. Scientists the University of Michigan’s Museum of Paleontology used fossilized teeth to make the size estimates.
The finding, which correlates to a 10 to 20-degree change in global temperature, follows Bergmann’s rule, which says that smaller animals within the same species are usually found in hotter climes. The study also may suggest that creatures alive today may shrink if global warming continues, said Philip Gingerich, a study author and the museum’s director.
“I joke about this all the time — we’re going to be walking around 3 feet tall if we keep going the way we’re going,” Gingerich said in a statement…
One-word argument against Man Made Global Warming: Greenland.
It has been warmer within the span of human history!
Wait a minute, there was a warm period thousands of years ago? Was that one caused by SUVs or Dinosaur farts?
Don’t confuse them with facts, they’re “scientists”.
Of course this also explains elephants. All those little tiny ones in Africa and south Asia, and the giant ones in the Arctic. Oh wait….
“The study also may suggest that creatures alive today may shrink if global warming continues.”
Perhaps future generations of creatures alive today. Dumbass.
Global warming is good for obesity. Add it to the list.
The temperature/size relationship is well known to hunters. Texas deer are
small; Saskatchewan deer are huge – up to 300 pounds.