It's about a Giganotosaurus fossil that's a serious contender for largest (and I think heaviest as well, unlike the old length standards) theropod.
There’s nothing wrong with that statement, Giganotosaurus is certainly a good contender for the longest (well, except
Spinosaurus, which is 2m longer than all the rest, but probably not heavier) and also the heaviest theropod.
The paper though (Calvo & Coria 1998) doesn’t hold up all that well in the light of more recent data. Consider that back then, and even more so when the holotype was found (upon whose morphology as reconstructed the conclusions largely base), several of the more important carcharodontosaurid discoveries had not yet been made. In addition, as I posted elsewhere, when I asked Coria he didn’t quite recall what measurements their figure of 8% was based on exactly, and suggested 5% would also be reasonable. So in effect, the figures put the specimen at around the size of Sue based on modern reconstructions, not the 1.95m-skulled behemoth suggested by the earlier ones.
So I don’t think the paper really belongs on "Recommended Literature", especially since I believe most people here have already read it.
You didn’t post the wrong paper, that’s the only paper on that specimen, or any referred specimen of
Giganotosaurus for that matter.
Nor a detailed description of
Giganotosaurus for that matter. All subsequent comments on the matter essentially base on the two papers that came out back then, a paper by Mazzetta et al. in 2004 that made some size estimates based on limb bone regressions, and some smaller bits of information that could be gleamed from descriptions of the braincase and of
Mapusaurus roseae, and on the two skeletal reconstructions by Greg Paul and Scott Hartman (based on unpublished documentation of the material).
I’m attaching you a few studies that you might find interesting if you don’t know them yet:
Calvo, J. O., and Coria, Rodolfo. 1998: New specimen of Giganotosaurus carolinii (Coria & Salgado, 1995), supports it as the largest theropod ever found. Gaia 15:117–122.Campione, N. E., D. C. Evans, C. M. Brown, and M. T. Carrano. 2014: Body mass estimation in non-avian bipeds using a theoretical conversion to quadruped stylopodial proportions. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 5:913–923.
Canale, J. I., F. E. Novas, and D. Pol. 2015: Osteology and phylogenetic relationships of Tyrannotitan chubutensis Novas, de Valais, Vickers-Rich and Rich, 2005 (Theropoda: Carcharodontosauridae) from the Lower Cretaceous of Patagonia, Argentina. Historical Biology 27:1–32.
Coria, R. A., and L. Salgado. 1995: A new giant carnivorous dinosaur from the Cretaceous of Patagonia. Nature 377:224.
Coria, R. A., and P. J. Currie. 2003: The braincase of Giganotosaurus carolinii (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the upper cretaceous of Argentina. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 22:802–811.
———. 2006: A new carcharodontosaurid (Dinosauria, Theropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous of Argentina. Geodiversitas 28:71–118.
Currie, P. J., and K. Carpenter. 2000: A new specimen of Acrocanthosaurus atokensis (Theropoda, Dinosauria) from the lower Cretaceous Antlers formation (lower Cretaceous, Aptian) of Oklahoma, USA. Geodiversitas 22:207–246.
Eddy, D. R., and J. A. Clarke. 2011: New Information on the Cranial Anatomy of Acrocanthosaurus atokensis and Its Implications for the Phylogeny of Allosauroidea (Dinosauria: Theropoda). PLOS ONE 6:e17932.
Mazzetta, G. V., P. Christiansen, and R. A. Fariña. 2004: Giants and bizarres: body size of some southern South American Cretaceous dinosaurs. Historical Biology 16:71–83.
As you can see there hasn’t been much written on Giganotosaurus in recent years, though relatives have gotten some more detailed attention and it has been included in some methodological papers.
(I think PDFs are freely available for all of these, but if you have trouble finding any of them, just ask).
