[MHGinTN]

Upon awakening this morning, I was wonder about something that puzzles me still: isn't it strange that our planet went through a period of gigantic landbaseed life forms, then such a stage ended and the largest animals today are in the oceans? The gigantism wasn't limited to just the animal kingdom either; many plant species fossils attest to the outsized proportions of many plants at the same time dinos ruled the earth. What would allow for such gigantic growth? Would a twin planet in close proximity, that created a tidal force such as the Moon produces, but on a larger scale, account for such a growth period? The physics of such giants would seem to have a simple explanation for becoming no longer the norm! I don't know the science of this, so I'm raising this perhaps silly question here on a Velikofskyesque thread.

[Junior]

Nothing quite so esoteric. The oxygen levels during the Carbiniferous Age were a tad bit higher than today, allowing large insects to exist. Gigantic land animals existed pert near up to 15k years ago (the dinosaurs were not nature's only experiment with big beasties -- some land mammals rivaled some of the sauropods in size) when there was a massive die-off of most terrestrial megafauna (anything over 45kg). The animal kingdom hasn't quite recovered from that die off just yet.

[boris]

"gigantic landbaseed life forms"

Isn't that mentioned in Frank Herbert's Dune?

Sorry.

--Boris