Resources and energetics determined dinosaur maximal size.

Abstract

Some dinosaurs reached masses that were approximately 8 times those of the largest, ecologically equivalent terrestrial mammals. The factors most responsible for setting the maximal body size of vertebrates are resource quality and quantity, as modified by the mobility of the consumer, and the vertebrate's rate of energy expenditure. If the food intake of the largest herbivorous mammals defines the maximal rate at which plant resources can be consumed in terrestrial environments and if that limit applied to dinosaurs, then the large size of sauropods occurred because they expended energy in the field at rates extrapolated from those of varanid lizards, which are approximately 22% of the rates in mammals and 3.6 times the rates of other lizards of equal size. Of 2 species having the same energy income, the species that uses the most energy for mass-independent maintenance of necessity has a smaller size. The larger mass found in some marine mammals reflects a greater resource abundance in marine environments. The presumptively low energy expenditures of dinosaurs potentially permitted Mesozoic communities to support dinosaur biomasses that were up to 5 times those found in mammalian herbivores in Africa today. The maximal size of predatory theropods was approximately 8 tons, which if it reflected the maximal capacity to consume vertebrates in terrestrial environments, corresponds in predatory mammals to a maximal mass less than a ton, which is what is observed. Some coelurosaurs may have evolved endothermy in association with the evolution of feathered insulation and a small mass.