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DrScottHartman — How big is your favorite dinosaur?
Published: 2013-04-19 18:20:34 +0000 UTC; Views: 22599; Favourites: 298; Downloads: 0
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Now before you start freaking out, note that the T. rex specimen is Sue (i.e. the largest T. rex) while the Triceratops and Stegosaurus specimens that I restored are one the smaller side. For that reason I included silhouettes of known larger specimens to provide a better estimate of the overall size range. I couldn't do this with Apatosaurus or else everything else would have gotten too small.Finally, note that Velociraptor is the actual skeletal, while the gray silhouetted dromaeosaur is Deinonychus, not some giant specimen of Velociraptor.
Enjoy, and if you have some good ideas for other comparisons let me know, I'm officially taking suggestions right now.
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Comments: 193
How's about Eotriceratops placed in comparison to Jumbo, the elephant? That would be cool as hell!
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This is just too awesome!!! 
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The small size of S.stenops(?) surely caught my eye as well...
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That was a subadult specimen, Scott Hartman said it himself:
[link]
"not quite full-grown"
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i have a suggestion. how about spinosaurus?
but anyway, Sue's A LOT bigger than what i expected... this is really cool, i hope to see more!
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You should do skeletal comparisons of particular faunal assemblages... They really give a different perspective, and feel very immersive.
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Definitely in the works.
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I would love to see a Dacentrurus/Kentrosaurus. Or perhaps one of the large Mamenchisaur species. I was always suspect of Dacentrurus's pelvis really being ~1.5 meters wide, and then I found a picture of the specimen with a person in the frame...That thing must have been a monster!!!
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Really cool. I personally would like to see Brachiosaurus. Not the African Giraffatitan, since its no longer known as Brachiosaurus, but B.altithorax, from the Morrison deposits. Another cool sauropod would be Argentinosaurus, although that might be kind of challenging. But hey, who doesn't enjoy a challenge.
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Argentinosaurus is slated for later this year (if the commission stays on schedule). And you're in luck, as I believe a Morrison sauropod comparison is in the works for the next week or two.
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Scott did do a skeletal of Brachiosaurus; it's the top one in his brachiosaur comparison.
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Thanks, didn't know that. Hope you enjoy his picks as much as I do.
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I like the Apatosaurus the most out of the dinosaurs in the comparison, sauropods are my favorite dinosaurs(my fav is Spinophorosaurus), and I like how Apatosaurus dwarfs all the others in that comparison.
A suggestion: How about a Morrison sauropods size comparison? That would be great.
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There is a major flaw in this scale: you forgot to add Allosaurus in the scale.
Joking aside, I didn't knew the Stegosaurus and Triceratops specimens you used in the scale are that small!
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I actually have something special planned for Allosaurus, although that means you'll be waiting longer for it. I think it's actually important for people to realize that not all dinosaur specimens are at (or even close to) the "biggest one". Worse, with many taxa there are no even remotely complete specimens that are close to published sizes (because published sizes in popular works are ALWAYS the largest available estimate).
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It would be a good idea if paleontologists and other enthusiasts would start a campaign against size inflation.
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I see.
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I'd like to do a Morrison sauropod comparison. Maybe next week.
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I like this alot. Always love these little comparisons. Not my exact favorites, but many of these come straight after. All the dinosaurs that you knew as a kid xD
And a group that shows some pretty good diversity among the six of them
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maybe some family tribes or sub families like the dromaeosaurines or Tyrannosaurines. What I would just love to see is the whole carcharodontosaurid family
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By this you are implying that the "Triceratops=Torosaurus" thing isn't valid? Or the "largest Triceratops specimen" has nothing to do with this?
P.S.: I'm not Jack Horner.
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Lol, I suppose the image does imply that, although I wasn't trying to take sides.
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Hahaha, yeah I understand that
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The real problem with emotional arguments over lumping and splitting is part of something that's been around since the beginning of paleontology. With very few exceptions, there are no common names for fossil taxa, just scientific names. People do not have a reference for that giant carnivorous dinosaur with the big head and little arms other than "Tyrannosaurus rex".
For example: Using one fossil taxon that does have a common name, suppose Mammuthus were sunk into Elephas at some point into the future. People wouldn't get overly emotional over that, as the animal is still called a mammoth regardless of what one does to its scientific name. But if someone declared that all African Elephants were to be called loxodonts instead of elephants, and couldn't be called elephants anymore, people would be up in arms. The fact that African elephants were split from Elephas to Loxodonta on the other hand means little to the public.
Unfortunately, it's too late to start giving common names to fossil taxa, even if it would potentially solve the emotional argument problem. If Brontosaurus was officially chosen as the common name of Apatosaurus excelsus, for example, people would still claim it's not right because it's scientifically wrong.
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That's one very good point. But yes, it's too late... it even sounds weird saying African Brachiosaur vs American Brachiosaur, for instance.
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I agree, there does seem to be a very strong emotional attachment to some of these arguments. On the one hand I do appreciate that people are passionate about the subject - I'd prefer that to apathy (or for their passion to only be for less intellectual pursuits), but at the same time people need to keep in perspective what we can and cannot actually say with confidence from the data at hand.
Anything is like that really - everyone wants say their favorite football team to win, but only blind fans really think that all teams have an equal chance any given year. Things like roster depth, draft pick success, and managing their salary cap are what lead to success (and a good dose of luck).
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Indeed. At the very end, it's the "emotional factor" what (almost always) leads people to do things (and as a psychologist I have to know that!), in fact, if I didn't "care" about this subject I wouldn't be commenting here.
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And let's not forget the dreaded "Who would win in a fight between (animal) and (animal)?" question. It's irrelevant nearly all the time it's asked since the creatures involved are usually from different times and places, and the remainder of the time the answer is "Too many variables."
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Oh, yeah you're right; size DOES tell us pretty important things about species and Taxonomy really IS useful to understand a lot of things as well, but the whole "Mesozoic Fight Club"... not thaaat much. Even in the case of Spinosaurus vs Carcharodontosaurus, I don't think that they liked to talk to each other very often, despite living together.
Anyhow, I'm not against these popular questions (they are amusing, aren't they?), but it's important to make clear what is a "fact" and what isn't.
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Aren't there fragments of T. rex believed to be larger than Sue? Then again, the chance that a visitor to the Maastrichtian would encounter one larger than Sue is probably very small anyway.
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Scott and a couple others semi-addressed this in the comments section of his 'Sue 3.0' upload. Essentially:
MOR 008 looks as if it may have been deliberately restored too long. This is supported by its dentary and maxilla being shorter than Sue's.
UCMP 118742 probably wasn't any larger than Sue (maxilla is shorter again)
UCMP 137538 is just a toe, which may have been pathological. Even then Stan possesses a couple of toe bones larger than the equivalent in Sue despite being far smaller overall.
Which leaves MOR 1126 aka Celeste, which is a bit of a mystery afaik.
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Perfect summary. And yes, Celeste is a mystery for now.
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Horner said the specimen would have been 44 feet long, but I suspect the true length is less than the preliminary announcement as usual. I remember Mapusaurus was originally thought to be 50 feet long, than got scaled down to 46 feet, and ultimately its short-lived "bigger than Giganotosaurus" claim to fame dropped off somewhere afterward.
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That's actually still accurate, albeit based on quite fragmentary material (the largest remain is a pubic shaft that's 110% the size of MUCPv-ch1's, so at least a bit bigger than MUCPv-95--not surprising considering we have at least 5 times more Mapusaurus than Giganotosaurus specimens).
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Women are always mysteries.... 
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I sometimes find references to size very, very strange in a way, especially how dimensions seem to vary in many literary sources. I get pretty annoyed by that. Also, I wonder how Puertasaurus might look here....
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I like the fact that the human looks like he wants to hug all the Dinos.
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The T. rex is probably thinking "Oh, showing off your functional arms, are you? How insensitive."
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"Tyrannosaurus rex forelimb bones exhibit extremely thick cortical bone, which have been interpreted as evidence that they were developed to withstand heavy loads. The biceps brachii muscle of a full-grown Tyrannosaurus rex was capable of lifting 199 kilograms (439 lb) by itself; other muscles such as the brachialis would work along with the biceps to make elbow flexion even more powerful. The M. biceps muscle of T. rex was 3.5 times as powerful as the human equivalent." -Wikipedia
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It's been interpreted that way, but I think it's wrong. Cortical bone thickness may simply indicate they are exposed to stress (e.g. they stick out and can knock into things) and small arms attached to a 5-8 ton animal take a lot more damage than yours do when you run into a wall.
And the strength thing is just silly - T. rex was 60x the average human in size, so having arms that can only lift 3.5x is ridiculously small and reduced.
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Maybe you could compare skeletals of the largest known members of each coelurosaur group.
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That would be fun, although it would require a bunch of new skeletals now currently on my short list.
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dont scare me like that... lately seems like everything's shrinking on me
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Given the heinous amount of length estimate creep in popular books I'm not surprised. At least you should be in good company.
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My favorite Dino is the Tyrannosaurus, because, it's, the Tyrannosaurus!
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Yep
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