Explosive shells made the largest wooden warships obsolete nearly overnight.

Evidence

Explosive shells cheated. They blew metal shrapnel everywhere, rupturing hulls beneath the waterline and triggering catastrophic fires. Wooden hulls simply could not withstand the destructive impact of exploding artillery. Just a single direct hit could sink a ship. Furthermore, since these new guns could be mounted on small, inexpensive vessels, they undermined the traditional rules of engagement. All but overnight the most impressive warships became bulky targets. — Emlen, Douglas J, Animal Weapons_ The Evolution of Battle, 446

Categorization

• XREF: Single-hit lethality flipping size advantage into a liability mirrors how high-lethality biological weapons restructure competition.

Related

• Slow-killing weapons made big warships advantageous and drove an arms race. (similarity 0.84)
• Human WMDs exceed any animal weapon in destructive capacity (similarity 0.80)
• Modern nuclear and biological weapons are destructively unprecedented in history (similarity 0.79)
• Identical circumstances trigger and collapse arms races in animals and humans. (similarity 0.79)
• Weapons evolve only when reproductive benefits exceed costs (similarity 0.78)