Largest sauropods

[stomatopod]

Yes, Darren speculated, but he did not invent entire phylogenies(This should be a new game, Inventar a phylogeny and explain it). When Cau analysed Yutyrannus in bis Megamatrix, Darren accepted its position.
While we're at it, I speculate that Yutyrannus is a Megaraptoran, or close to them, maybe a step more derived.

[creature386]

One thing that made me curious is when he said that large titanosaurids were more like brachiosaurids in neck posture. Is there information on this? According to The Dinosauria, a horizontal neck posture was the more common one in sauropods and that Brachiosaurus&relatives were the exception.

stomatopod
Just curious, does your computer sometimes auto-correct English words?

[stomatopod]

No, but my phone does ;-)
And I cannot turn off this coprolite of a feature.

[Fragillimus335]

I think most of Nima's works are accurate and very well done, but the Puertasaurus seems to be a mistake he keeps refusing to acknowledge.

[theropod]

Sept 14, 2014 22:26:07 GMT 5 stomatopod said:

Yes, Darren speculated, but he did not invent entire phylogenies(This should be a new game, Inventar a phylogeny and explain it). When Cau analysed Yutyrannus in bis Megamatrix, Darren accepted its position.
While we're at it, I speculate that Yutyrannus is a Megaraptoran, or close to them, maybe a step more derived.

If you follow Cau on that it won’t work out. He classifies Yutyrannus as a tyrannosauroid→, but megaraptorans as carcharodontosaurs→.

[theropod]

Sept 15, 2014 0:14:53 GMT 5 Fragillimus335 said:

I think most of Nima's works are accurate and very well done, but the Puertasaurus seems to be a mistake he keeps refusing to acknowledge.

The strange thing about his Puertasaurus is how much longer he restores the posterior dorsals compared to the anterior ones. I don’t know what that's supposed to be based on, I’ve never seen a sauropod with such proportions.

[stomatopod]

Theropod,
That data is incomplete as it is not the newest version of bis Megamatrix.
There is a newer, unlabeled tree rooted on Saturnalia posted on his blog. If I read it properly(which I should, otherwise you can laugh at me), then Tyrannosauridae has a new, large sister clade. I think that Megaraptorans are Coelurosaurs, but I am only 80% sure that they belong within Tyrannosauridae.
I think the manual unguals and vertebrae of Yutyrannus are pretty interesting.

The longer verts in the back of Puerta are nonesense and is contrary what we see in other relatives.The D2 seems to be a fourth of the length of the longest verts.

[blaze]

Do we agree that Puertasaurus is the most exaggerated sauropod of recent memory? its D2 doesn't appear to soundly beat in size any of the more posterior dorsals of the type of Dreadnoughtus and the same goes for its cervical vertebrae, maybe it has a wider torso but it doesn't like it's much larger than Futalongkosaurus and Dreadnoughtus.

[Deleted]

Sept 15, 2014 5:09:48 GMT 5 blaze said:

Do we agree that Puertasaurus is the most exaggerated sauropod of recent memory?

No, that would be Andesaurus.

[blaze]

But Andesaurus is relatively obscure and claims of its giant size come from a popular dinosaur book not scientific publications or the like, Puertasaurus got the attention of the media when it was discovered and if you ask paleontologists which ones they think are the largest dinosars chances are all of them will include Puertasaurus in their top 3.

[Deleted]

Sept 15, 2014 17:52:56 GMT 5 blaze said:

But Andesaurus is relatively obscure and claims of its giant size come from a popular dinosaur book not scientific publications or the like, Puertasaurus got the attention of the media when it was discovered and if you ask paleontologists which ones they think are the largest dinosars chances are all of them will include Puertasaurus in their top 3.

Well, all the dinosaurs which are thought to be larger than Puertasaurus are pretty much the very obscure, often questioned fragmentary or trace fossil legends, like A. fragillimus, Parabrontopodus distercii, "Brachiosaurus" nougaredi, Broome Titanosauriform, etc. so it's no surprise why Puertasaurus is almost always included in the palaeontologists' "top 3 largest dinosaurs" lists.

Andesaurus may be more obscure and it's exaggerated size estimates come form a less-credible source than scientific papers, but it does little to change the fact that Andesaurus is by far the most exaggerated sauropod, no wait, dinosaur in terms of size. Heck, it's size is even more exaggerated than Tyrannosaurus' early published sizes were, and by a large leading gap to boot!

[blaze]

Early published sizes of Tyrannosaurus were not exaggerated, apart from excessively long tail but we are talking about 25% longer at most, Andesaurus yes it's true that Dixon had that ridiculous estimate in his book but apart from Sassani (just for a while) I don't remember anyone else taking it seriously.

But I guess you have point.

EDIT:

I'll put this here to avoid double post.

I got the paper that describes Parabrontopodus distercii, there is a print 165cm long but is part of a single trackway, the rest of the pes prints are 135-162cm long for an average of 148.5cm long, pretty big right? well no, their average width is 72.7cm, they are clearly the prints of an animal whose feet are sliding in the mud, Parabrontopodus distercii was not a super giant, it was roughly the size of Diplodous CM84, maybe a little bigger, still, we are dealing with a sauropod that probably didn't surpass 20 tonnes.

[creature386]

Sept 14, 2014 23:25:23 GMT 5 stomatopod said:

No, but my phone does ;-)
And I cannot turn off this coprolite of a feature.

I completely forgot that I can actually fix the auto-correction. Anyway, I now replaced the auto-corrections with actual English words.

[creature386]

More on Dreadnoughtus:
svpow.com/2014/09/15/how-long-was-the-torso-of-dreadnoughtus/

From 60 to 30 metric tons, wow.

[stomatopod]

Thank you creature.

And I cannot help but I think of it as a Titanosaurian Apatosaurine.