Are You Fascinated With the Huge Creatures That Became Extinct about 65 million Years Ago?

The study of evolution, although it does not fully explain how life began, is fascinating and mysterious. The fact that life began with tiny organisms, evolved to gigantic creatures that are now extinct, and than evolved to “normal” sized creatures is one of the facts that intrigues me. Why don’t we have the gigantic creatures that once inhabited planet Earth? Although we do have the blue whale, which is currently the largest recorded living thing with length of about 33 meters
(108 ft).
When thinking of gigantic creatures, most of us immediately recall dinosaurs. However, some of the gigantic groups of creatures that perished 65 million years ago were not dinosaurs, but were marine reptiles that gave birth to live young.
The New York Times from March 23, 2010, has an article titled “For Extinct Monsters of the Deep, A Little Respect.” The article shows a fossil and talks about one of these gigantic creatures that lived in the ocean about 250 million years ago. The article, written by Sean B. Carroll, is very informative and talks about different evolutionary characteristics between marine reptiles that give birth to live young and those reptiles that live in water, but need to come to land to lay their eggs.