Not even an extinct giant banana for scale?

And a timeline at the bottom to see when they went extinct.

Even just a map-like scale down in the corner. For instance, I have no idea how big a spectacled bear is (I mean, I do now because I looked it up).

I agree. I honestly don't have a great sense of the size of the modern varieties of a lot of these.

I was hoping that there would be a banana for scale.. maybe a 170cm tall banana.

I came to comment the same.

Yes and no. There was a moment in time where oxigen levels were higher, allowing animals like insects to be big (like the Carboniferous). But its not the case here. Most of this animals got extinct as a combination of prehistoric human hunting and the end of the ice age.

A high oxygen earth is a colder one, so size is an advantage.

No, Jo, we are going to total extinction of all forms of life on this planet and homo sapiens will be the last to go; not fair.

I was thinking about it too, it’s possible that one part of it was that predators would normally hunt the smallest of a group, so it pays to be big, but humans hunt the biggest of a group for trophies, so it pays to be small. Of course, there’s other conditions, but that might be one of them.

>> I was thinking about why animals have shrunk so much>>Think no more. Its humans. Most everywhere humans have lived, other larger wild animals have gone extinct, leaving only smaller relatives. The process still continues today with trophy hunting, which picks off the largest animals still extant. Some of the largest of their species still survive (Polar bears, blue whales) but in remote regions and even so their populations have sadly been decimated in the past by hunting. But... they are stlil around!

How much does available food supply play a part in this? Probably a lot.

I don't know but there was something on the news some days ago about how people had let their goldfish free in lakes and they grew enormously (much like the size of Koi), damaging the natural fauna. So perhaps they just adapt to their natural environment?

I think scientist are trying to work on this. They are harvesting mammoth DNA so they can bring something back. But if successful the creature won't be perfect. Look it up! 🙂

You cant. Their looks will depend on how their future environment is and random luck like which mutations they get and which species evolve and not just get extinct.

There is no future, especially for animals.

They werent able to become smaller. The ones that got extinct just never could adapt to the hunting pressures of humans. We killed most of this, its not a good thing that they are gone.

Many of the animals shown are cousins, rather than direct ancestors. And we do indeed have megafauna cousins, like gorillas.