Earliest horses show past global warming affected body size of mammals
Thursday, February 23, 2012 - 15:30
in Earth & Climate
As scientists continue developing climate change projection models, paleontologists studying an extreme short-term global warming event have discovered direct evidence about how mammals respond to rising temperatures. Researchers have now found a correlation between temperature and body size in mammals by following the evolution of the earliest horses about 56 million years ago: As temperatures increased, their body size decreased.