New technique drastically reduces weight of dinosaurs

Adam Khor

*Insert joke about workout routine for middle aged dinos obsessed with losing a few tons"

A new weight estimate technique that was applied to Brachiosaurus/Giraffatitan brancai and found that it probably weighed around 23 tons instead of 60 or 80 as previously stated. If this technique is more accurate than the others, then it is possible that all dinosaurs will be found to be much more light weight than previously thought.

On the other hand, this may mean they were more agile

http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/article00375.html

Kess73

That is quite interesting, but I would love to read a more detailed breakdown as to how they get their figures.

I know something similar was tried with great white sharks in terms of working out an accurate mathematical model that could give the weight and length of a shark based only on the size of certain upper jaw teeth and also using jaw dimensions to figure out true sizes.

It all worked nice and neat for a bit, until one very obvious factor came into play. Not all shark of the same length weigh the same.


Something similar was also done with crocodile skeletons, and again a formula was worked out by which they could estimate the weight of a croc from a skeleton, and again that very simple real life fact of the same length crocs not weighing the same came into play. Even a pair of skeletons that were almost equal in terms of dimensions could come from crocodiles with a 40% to 50% weight difference between the heavier and lighter croc.


I just wonder when, be it in a few months or a few years time, we will be presented with yet another new formula that shows the formula before it to be less than accurate.

Adam Khor

Sure, as always happens:pac:

Kess73

I am always sceptical of any formula that claims to be able to guage an animal's size/weight. Mainly because those used nowadays on living animals are very flawed despite having actual living animals to use as reference points.

One would think that any formula for weight of an extinct animal would be even more flawed because it has no living point of reference.


One thing in the article that puzzles me though. They used a Giraffatitan rather than an Altithorax as their test subject Brachiosaurus. So that had me do a little reading on that particular one, and from what I can find online and in my books the Giraffatitan was already estimated to be in the 23 to 30 ton range so basically their new formula just agrees with some of the more recent estimates on the same Species/sub species. The Altithorax was always taken as being the larger of the two with estimates around the 40 to 50 ton mark based on it have a much heavier/stronger bone structure but a lack of Altithorax finds made it hard to guage.

Pretty sure that what they think are sub adult Altithorax come in as bigger than adult Giraffatitan though.

Capt'n Midnight

so not that much bigger than indricotherium

Kess73

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

so not that much bigger than indricotherium

At least until they apply their new method on indricotherium

Capt'n Midnight

Kess73 wrote: »

At least until they apply their new method on indricotherium

they can't can they :eek:

it's just a scaled up rhino so should be fairly accurate


This makes the Blue Whale super huge


also have they taken into account the type of lungs dinos had as that would affect the density of the thorax

Adam Khor

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

they can't can they :eek:

it's just a scaled up rhino so should be fairly accurate


This makes the Blue Whale super huge


also have they taken into account the type of lungs dinos had as that would affect the density of the thorax

I don´t know if they took it into account, but there's another study about sauropod pneumaticity that caught my eye; according to it, "the volume of air in the body of Diplodocus is calculated to have replaced 3,000 kgs of tissue that would have been present if the animal were solid". They give Diplodocus a weight of about 12 tons, not bigger than the biggest elephants ever recorded.

http://sauroposeidon.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/wedel-2005-mass-estimates.pdf

Galvasean

The new lighter weight estimates certainly seem to match up with the recent Spinophorosaurus CAT scan which showed the animal to be far more lively than once thought. I guess this is the end of the lumbering giants.