The Incredible Shrinking Man

Wonderful things can happen when a species shrinks. In the case of a particular lineage of theropod dinosaurs that wonderful thing eventually turned out to be flight. Dinosaurs became birds. Before the bulky theropods that roamed the Earth 200+ million years ago turned into the elegant feathered creatures we know today, they had to shed […]

Cope’s rule states that, as geologic time progresses, body size increases. Edward Drinker Cope, the dinosaur fossil hunter who postulated the rule at the end of the 19th century, based his theory on the analysis of over 1500 fossil families. The younger species in his collection were on average almost 10% larger than the older species […]