Ocean warming has been shrinking marine animals for 450 million years, massive study reveals

Marine animals do not just struggle when ocean temperatures spike, they actually shrink, and a massive new study shows this pattern has been repeating for nearly 450 million years. Researchers built one of the largest collections of marine body size data ever put together, drawing on almost 9,000 recorded changes and over 1.6 million individual measurements taken from fossils, historical records and living animals. What they found was striking, sea creatures shrank far more sharply during periods of intense global warming compared to crises caused by cooling or falling oxygen levels. This suggests the shrinking already being measured in today's fish and shellfish is not some new, isolated trend, but part of a pattern written deep into the planet's history.What is the Lilliput effect in mar