It doesn't make sense that the largest animal known to have ever lived is the blue whale and it's currently living in our timeline. Why there was not a prehistoric sea monster or something bigger? Everything was bigger back then. It doesn't make sense.
>>5088592Its possible, even probable, that there have been bigger things, but we just don't know because the vast majority of things that have ever lived didn't have the decency to leave behind any traces. Most whale skeletons that hit the ocean floor don't last more than a couple years as is.We just currently happen to be in a period of very large filter feeding whales due to a decline of large predator species in the ocean as they were displaced by smaller more generalist predator species.
>>5088592>earth was warmer>no polar icecaps>no circumpolar antarctic current>no ginormous amounts of krill>no food source to support an animal the size of a blue whaleThere were, of course, two previous glaciations of sufficient length:>End OrdovicianToo early for vertebrates to really take advantage of, thus a hard size limit. Also wiped out a lot of marine life (unusual for an ice age), so there was probably something funky going on.>Carboniferous/PermianBest shot, but no endothermic oxygen breathers yet, nevermind marine ones. Thus size limitations of fish apply. Compare modern filter-feeding fish.Modern super-sized cetaceans are highly unusual and dependent on a likewise highly unusual set of circumstances. Worth noting that neither of the previously mentioned cold spells would've had a circumpolar current (no isolated antarctica), so chances are, they still lacked the hyperproductive environment of the modern antarctic sea.The oligocene to present bringing together airbreathing (more efficient due to the much higher density of oxygen in the air in comparison to water) endothermic marine animals, a cold spell lasting tens of millions of years and an isolated polar continent around which an unending cold current creates ideal conditions for marine productivity to supersize marine endotherms is a once in a planet's lifetime event.Be glad you were there for it.
It is no less probable to have lived now than at any other time since complex vertebrate food chains established themselves.
There might be, but we haven't found them and we will probably never find them (humanity has/will only scratched the surface when it comes to fossils)
>>5088749Not to mention the countless species that never even fossilized
More time to evolve bigger simple as
whales inflict a nearly infinite amount of pain and suffering on all the sentient sea critters they eat every day of their lives. QuadTrillions of shrimp critters just minding their own business, living out their lives in their own avatar paradise.. THEN, from out of no where, you are your entire society are swallowed whole into a giant whale stomach of acid where you all die in misery over the next 15 minutes which feels like an eternity.
>>5088592*destroys your fossil recordnothing personnel human beings
