Biological Scale
Now to give you a sense of scale, that is, where are we in terms of biology
and size. What I've plotted here is body mass in kilograms against
body length in meters. This is a log-log plot. So, you're looking at
decades of differences in both body mass and length for some of the
smallest animals and plants and some of the largest plants and animals.
So, you see there are unicellular plants and animals going all the way up
to some of the largest organisms that ever existed.
By the way, as a botanist, I take some pride in telling you the largest
organisms that ever existed regardless of what Jurassic Park may tell you,
are not the dinosaurs. They're right about here. The largest organisms
that ever lived, alive today and they are terrestrial plants and aquatic
plants. Let me give you an example of one of the largest terrestrial
organisms. This is the General Sherman Tree. That is a human
being standing next to it. That is the trunk of the tree, which is so
large it can't be photographed at least in this frame. I'll tell you that
because I know the diameter of the height and the taper of the trunk and I
know the density of the wood. The trunk of that tree weighs 600 tons.
That is an extraordinary and large organism. Many dinosaur types could be
squeezed together to give you that kind of weight. Naturally no dinosaur
ever reached this height.
Now in terms of the record holders, these are the aquatic plants. This is a scuba diver. This is a great Pacific kelp, a brown algal type of aquatic plant. The largest fragment that was ever found washed ashore measured in excess of 55 meters in length to get a feeling for size. These things are still alive. They're not extinct and of course, on the small size plants can be a single cell.
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Narrative Index
BioForum Index
