Science The Possibility of a Giant Mesozoic Mammal.

[Sailor.X]

This I have been pondering for a while now. The existence of a much larger mammal in the Mesozoic. For a long time scientists have said that the only mammals around were mouse sized creatures. Then they found this creature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repenomamus

That find rewrote the textbooks. But I think that is the tip of the iceberg. For a long time it was stated that mammals remained small because of Dinosaurs and other giant reptiles keeping them small. But that can no longer be the case because turns out the Cenozoic had a lot more giant reptiles and theropods than we thought.

And this is just South America. Other Giants were around all over the world in the Cenozoic. And yet with very large creatures like this. Many of which actively hunted on land. Mammals got larger. Which begs the question. Is there a very large mammal from the Mesozoic that has just not been discovered yet. Something Wolf sized living in the Northern more colder climates of the planet during that time. I for one think such a mega mammal exists. it just has not been discovered yet. What are your thoughts on the matter.

 

[Bacle]

There could have been, for sure; it's just fossilization is very hit and miss in what will end up preserved and where.

Also remember the current plate arrangement for our time is not what would have been around back then, so it's also possible fossils of such creatures have been subducted or destroyed in trubidite flows that expose them to the sea.

People often really do not get how hard it is to get fossilization to occur, instead of organic decay, and how hit and miss fossil beds can be in what ends up in them.

 

[Sailor.X]

There could have been, for sure; it's just fossilization is very hit and miss in what will end up preserved and where.

Also remember the current plate arrangement for our time is not what would have been around back then, so it's also possible fossils of such creatures have been subducted or destroyed in trubidite flows that expose them to the sea.

People often really do not get how hard it is to get fossilization to occur, instead of organic decay, and how hit and miss fossil beds can be in what ends up in them.

Yeah the process of Fossilization is really a luck of the draw. Some species we know from literally a handful of bones. And some species we know are alive today have zero fossils in the fossil record. Example Chimps. We know they existed back in prehistoric times but we have no fossils of them because the areas they live in are hard to preserve fossils. This is more than likely the case here.