Largest sauropods

[blaze]

You had already linked to Nima's Brachiosaurus or the 2m Apatosaurus femur?

Regarding Paul, I just noticed that he did include specimen number, over the measurements of the scapulacoracoid there's a bolded "5001" just sitting there not related to any of the measurements, this is the number of the scapulacoracoid in Jensen's usage, BYU 5001, over the tallest dorsal part we find another bolded number, "5000", again this is the number of the BYU dorsal that Paul thought was an anterior dorsal of B. altithorax, in fact BYU 5000 is the type specimen of Ultrasauros and this same vertebrae was later demonstrated by Curtice et al. (1996) to be a posterior dorsal of Supersaurus. If you pay attention to the table you find that he did this several times too with G. brancai, shoehorning HMN XV1 into the column of HMN Y or HM D into that of HM Ki24 or HMN J into HMN SA9, probably for the purpose of saving space.



It's not that one, BYU 4744 is a posterior dorsal, left ilium, left radius and right metacarpal 2 and a rib (?) and they come from Potter Creek not Recapture Creek.

[theropod]

Nima’s Brachiosaurus.
Where is BYU 4744 described?

[blaze]

In this paper:

Jensen, J. A. 1987. New brachiosaur material from the Late Jurassic of Utah and Colorado. Great Basin Naturalist 47:592–608.

[Fragillimus335]

Jeez, Brachiosaurus was huge… ~29 meters long…That sneaky sauropod. If you assume 35 tons for the Holotype 24.5 meter specimen, the big boys might have weighed 55+ tons. Apatosaurus also seems like it just keeps growing. The oklahoma giant being <80% grown! That beast would be 35 meters long as an adult! Probably an 80 ton diplodocid...

[Deleted]

Dreadnoughtus has finally entered the media:

news.yahoo.com/astoundingly-huge-dinosaur-skeleton-unearthed-050002143.html
news.nationalpost.com/2014/09/04/dreadnoughtus-dinosaur-weighed-65-tons-more-than-a-boeing-737-and-was-still-growing-when-it-died/


There are some claims that are rather questionable or need verification, as usual.

[blaze]

Which ones? the operating empty weight of the Boing 737 nextgen varies between 36 and 45 tonnes, older models could have been as light as 28 tonnes.

None of the bones are exceptional in length but they are thick indeed, humerus and femur circumference are 785mm and 910mm respectively, the only published sauropods with thicker limb bones appear to be Brachiosaurus altithorax and Argentiosaurus for the femur. It soundly beats Paralititan and Futalongkosaurus in comparable measurements.

[Deleted]

Sept 4, 2014 21:49:16 GMT 5 blaze said:

Which ones? the operating empty weight of the Boing 737 nextgen varies between 36 and 45 tonnes, older models could have been as light as 28 tonnes.

None of the bones are exceptional in length but they are thick indeed, humerus and femur circumference are 785mm and 910mm respectively, the only published sauropods with thicker limb bones appear to be Brachiosaurus altithorax and Argentiosaurus for the femur. It soundly beats Paralititan and Futalongkosaurus in comparable measurements.

Claims like the ones saying it isn't fully grown yet. I wonder if that's a media fabrication or if it's real. We only have the abstracts for the papers...

[Fragillimus335]

Sounds cool, pretty heavy for an animal with a femur that looks to be under 2 meters long!

[blaze]

We don't only have the abstracts of the paper, its open access!

From the description paper:

Remarkably, multiple lines of evidence indicate that, despite its enormous size, MPM-PV 1156 was not osteologically mature at death. The scapula remains unfused to the coracoid (Fig. 2B, Supplementary Fig. 15), and the posteromedial margin of the coracoid foramen abuts the scapula; both of these morphologies have been cited as indicators of osteological immaturity in sauropods50,51. Moreover, although histological analysis of the humerus indicates that its cortical bone has undergone extensive secondary remodelling, the element retains a thick layer of vascularized fibrolamellar bone between the remodelled inner cortex and the periphery of the periosteal surface (see Supplementary Information). It also lacks lines of arrested growth or an external fundamental system52 (Fig. 2G), which may indicate osteological immaturity53 (although Company54 proposed this as a synapomorphy of Titanosauria rather than an indicator of ontogenetic stage). A similar pattern is observed in the dorsal ribs, which are extensively remodelled but retain primary fibrolamellar bone tissue towards the periosteal surface. Recent analyses55,56 have suggested that titanosaurs may have developed extensively remodelled tissues after reaching sexual maturity but prior to attaining their maximum size. Thus, the presence of unremodelled fibrolamellar bone in the outer cortex of the MPM-PV 1156 humerus suggests that this massive Dreadnoughtus individual was still growing at the time of its death.

And yes, the femur is 191cm long.

[Deleted]

Sept 4, 2014 23:15:07 GMT 5 blaze said:

We don't only have the abstracts of the paper, its open access!

From the description paper:

Remarkably, multiple lines of evidence indicate that, despite its enormous size, MPM-PV 1156 was not osteologically mature at death. The scapula remains unfused to the coracoid (Fig. 2B, Supplementary Fig. 15), and the posteromedial margin of the coracoid foramen abuts the scapula; both of these morphologies have been cited as indicators of osteological immaturity in sauropods50,51. Moreover, although histological analysis of the humerus indicates that its cortical bone has undergone extensive secondary remodelling, the element retains a thick layer of vascularized fibrolamellar bone between the remodelled inner cortex and the periphery of the periosteal surface (see Supplementary Information). It also lacks lines of arrested growth or an external fundamental system52 (Fig. 2G), which may indicate osteological immaturity53 (although Company54 proposed this as a synapomorphy of Titanosauria rather than an indicator of ontogenetic stage). A similar pattern is observed in the dorsal ribs, which are extensively remodelled but retain primary fibrolamellar bone tissue towards the periosteal surface. Recent analyses55,56 have suggested that titanosaurs may have developed extensively remodelled tissues after reaching sexual maturity but prior to attaining their maximum size. Thus, the presence of unremodelled fibrolamellar bone in the outer cortex of the MPM-PV 1156 humerus suggests that this massive Dreadnoughtus individual was still growing at the time of its death.

And yes, the femur is 191cm long.

Oh, seems like the media actually got it right.

I couldn't find the paper on google scholar, all I can find is those two abstracts we had a while back.

[creature386]

A 60 t subadult, wow!

[Infinity Blade]

Imagine an adult...it seems this fellow lived up to his name.

[blaze]

A Gigantic, Exceptionally Complete Titanosaurian Sauropod Dinosaur from Southern Patagonia, Argentina
Kenneth J. Lacovara, Matthew C. Lamanna, Lucio M. Ibiricu, Jason C. Poole, Elena R. Schroeter, Paul V. Ullmann, Kristyn K. Voegele, Zachary M. Boles, Aja M. Carter, Emma K. Fowler, Victoria M. Egerton, Alison E. Moyer, Christopher L. Coughenour, Jason P. Schein, Jerald D. Harris, Rubén D. Martínez & Fernando E. Novas

Scientific Reports 4, Article number: 6196 doi:10.1038/srep06196 Received 01 April 2014 Accepted 30 July 2014 Published 04 September 2014

Titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs were the most diverse and abundant large-bodied herbivores in the southern continents during the final 30 million years of the Mesozoic Era. Several titanosaur species are regarded as the most massive land-living animals yet discovered; nevertheless, nearly all of these giant titanosaurs are known only from very incomplete fossils, hindering a detailed understanding of their anatomy. Here we describe a new and gigantic titanosaur, Dreadnoughtus schrani, from Upper Cretaceous sediments in southern Patagonia, Argentina. Represented by approximately 70% of the postcranial skeleton, plus craniodental remains, Dreadnoughtus is the most complete giant titanosaur yet discovered, and provides new insight into the morphology and evolutionary history of these colossal animals. Furthermore, despite its estimated mass of about 59.3 metric tons, the bone histology of the Dreadnoughtus type specimen reveals that this individual was still growing at the time of death.

[theropod]

Why are you people so surprised?
Most dinosaurs were still growing at the time of death (Myhrvold 2013). It’s not always explicitely noted (obviously lots of them aren’t even complete enough for it to be readily apparent), that’s all. Case in point, there is no confirmed osteologically mature specimen of none less than Allosaurus, although there are candidates (Bypee et al. 2006).
Signs of skeletal immaturity are typically only noted if they are particularly obvious (i.e. if the animal is either a real subadult with readily-apparent non-fusion throughout the skeleton, or if it happens to be from a study that examined limb-bone histology).

[creature386]

I remember that Apatosaurus case, I was simply impressed because we now have a dinosaur from a very weight level where we know this and where it got noted.