Originally posted by Zanzibar
Hate to burst your bubble, but giants couldn't exist nowadays, [...]there isn't enough oxygen in the atmosphere to sustain them
I
think that you are thinking of something different. In the past, there used to be higher levels of oxygen in the atmosphere. This meant that
giant insects could exist (and insects were on land before other animals, so they could dominate). This is because insects don't have lungs, but
rather have small tubes that ramify throughout their body that are open to the air, air flows into them like normal. With a high concentration of
oxygen in the atmosphere, that meant that they could grow big, with current levels of oxygen, there wasn't enough oxygen left in the air that flowed
through those tubes to feed the needs of the whole body or the deep tissues. So they evovled to become smaller.