Blue whales keep getting bigger Super-sizing Blue whales are the
largest animal to have ever lived on Earth and - for now - are
continuing to get bigger, say researchers. The findings come out
of a study by evolutionary biologist Dr Alistair Evans, of
Monash University in Melbourne, and colleagues. "The biggest
animal ever is potentially still getting bigger," says Evans,
whose study is reported this week in Proceedings of the Royal
Academy of Sciences. When the dinosaurs and their marine cousins
went extinct 65 million years ago, mammals took the opportunity
to take advantage of the space these creatures had previously
occupied, says Evans. He and colleagues investigated the
increase in the size of mammals since this time. The study
estimated the body size of hundreds of species in 28 different
orders of animals in 20 time periods over the past 70 million
years. The researchers used teeth, skulls and limb bones to work
out the size of the animal, based on comparisons with current
day species. The researchers