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DrScottHartman — How big is your favorite dinosaur?
Published: 2013-04-19 18:20:34 +0000 UTC; Views: 22598; 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
You should go by classifications, or by families. that would be cool!
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I think that will definitely happen, but not all at once.
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Thank you, that would be fantastic!
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How about a comparison of all of the diplodocid skeletals you have done in the same image.
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That's a good idea, although then I'll have to finish updating all of them.
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One thing I would add to the images would be specimen numbers. Why did you decide to grey out Deinonychus?
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If I do a poster (e.g. for print) I'll do specimen numbers, but this initial one was for a specific request. Deinonychus wasn't on "the list" but Velociraptor looked really pathetic so I added a larger dromaeosaur for the sake of variety (though not really consistency, I admit).
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Don't you think that Triceratops looks small ??
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That's why I explained that it's a somewhat smallish specimen while the T. rex is based on the largest known specimen. The gray silhouette Triceratops is scaled up to one of the largest known specimens for comparison.
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Even the gray one looks small, the largest Triceratops skull was estimated to be around 2.7m
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Yeah, but that's an estimate I don't quite buy yet, so I went with 2.5 meters.
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But the skull of the gray one is not 2.5m either, it's about 2m (120px long when the scalebar 59px).
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So is the larger one based on the Science Museum of Minnesota skeleton (claimed to be the largest), the giant BYU skull, or something else?
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The giant BYU skull. Of course it's possible that the proportions changes at that size, but it should be within a reasonable margin of error.
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Maybe I'm wrong, but I knew the biggest known Triceratops skull was over 2 meters long; the one in your grey silouhette looks smaller at naked eye.
Stegosaurus is way smaller than I thought.
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Your naked eye is playing tricks on you - the gray silhouetted triceratops has a skull almost 2.5 meters long.
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Amazing!
Didn't know good ol' Rexy was so big compared to Apatosaurus...
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Well, that's the biggest 'rex, and if I had the biggest apatosaur in there it would have played out differently.
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Of course, but it's still impressive
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Yeah, I've seen people on the interwebs say things like "T. rex isn't designed for killing sauropods", and while I can't disagree with the basic premise, I'm not sure how much it really matters when you have a head that large, strong, and with teeth that can crunch onto bone better than other theropods. I don't want to give any extra support to the "T. rex to rulez them all!" meme either, but I can't see how a T. rex wouldn't be just as capable as dispatching Apatosaurus as an equal-size carnosaur.
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Infact i guess, at least where they coexisted, a T.rex could have easily dispatched a young or apatosaur-sized Alamosaurus.
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Ummm, no. It's common sense that a ~20+ tonne sauropod would give a ~6 tonne theropod quite a run for it's money without much problems.
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I imagine a T-rex could bleed out an adult Alamosaurus.
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I just spent the last two days beating into my student's that it was T. rex not T-rex, so don't go encouraging them to fall off the bus!!!
...but yes, I'd think so too, although there would be higher risk than trying the same trick on some smaller prey.
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THAT!!!! is MISTER T. REX! And if a rex was hungry enough, I think it would go for Big Al.
And I do believe it went after smaller prey too. Know what I think was its main weapon for smaller prey? Its feet. While the meme of large tyrannosauroids/tyrannosaurids stooping low while running to catch small dinos is thrilling, the kinetics add up to a hell of a lot of bad falls, IMO. This applies to teenager and up predators. Carnosaurs and coelurosaurs.
Large prey, like adult ceratopsians, sauropods, and duckys? That big mouth!
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Nothing,apart from a larger gape(?) and sharper teeth, but you are right in that Tyrannosaurus has it's compensations and may have simply used a different method of dispatch (so to speak).
I like the idea of the Allosaurs mostly evolving to deal with sauropods and the Tyrannosaurs dealing with smaller, more agile prey. Then, in the process of evolution, you find all sorts of diversifications and convergences.
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Sure, but that's like saying a chain saw is designed for cutting down trees so it can't open a tin can as well as a can opener - that may be true, but in a pinch the chainsaw will open the heck out of a can.
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I was only playing Devil's Advocate but the Allosaurs must have been specialised for something or they would have evolved in a different direction. I don't believe in over-adaptation so Tryrannosaurs were just as likely doing something else, at least for the greater part of their evolution. Would a chainsaw find some kind of undue stress that it hadn't bargained on when it made a mess of tins and then go back to cutting down trees?
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Oh I agree that allosaurs were specialized for doing something different (the reduced dentition size alone suggests a very different bite strategy). I was instead refering to internet references I've seen indicating that T. rex would be poor at hunting sauropods, which I don't see as at all a sure thing, even if that wasn't its primary design.
Remember that Allosaurus probably didn't have the option of following the same morphological "path" as T. rex, because it's immediate ancestors didn't have the same suite of adaptations that allowed giant tyrannosaurs to specialize so much on head size and bite strength.
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I can't help thinking of an analogy regarding hyenas & Cape hunting dogs: both can bring down wildebeest, one just gets that much more mileage outta the bony bits.
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Yeah, I think you were getting at the idea that some people might think 'more is less' in regards to Tyrannosaurs preying on Sauropods. However, my comments were regarding the big gape and blade-like nature of the teeth in regards to Allosaurs, not Tyrannosaurs. I should have explained the tangent I was going on better.
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Size inflation is a real problem among those writing dinosaur books. I prefer to scale mine to average size, not maximum theoretical size like everyone else seems to want to do.
That being said, what's the deal with Allosaurus? Most popular dinosaur media exaggerates sizes a lot, but Allosaurus gets scaled WAY beyond its actual 28-foot average size to "35-40 feet" for most of the popular size references. Are they insisting on treating A. maximus (Saurophaganax) as if it were an average Allosaurus?
Incidentally, I would like to see an Allosaurus comparison that includes most of the well-known specimens and includes A. maximus as well.
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I rather like bigger size restorations. Look up statistics on Nile crocodiles, then search for Gustav on Youtube.
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Argh. "is are". I cannot brain today, I have the dumb.
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Adult Nile crocs average 12 feet. Gustave was fairly close to twice that. What are the chances he would show up in the Nile croc fossil record compared to the others?
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About the same chance as...a 50-foot Allosaurus by comparison. And nothing like that has ever turned up.
Terrible math, I know, but that also would mean a 35-40 foot Allosaurus like the one I mentioned would be about as common as an 18-foot Nile croc. That's bigger than most Nile crocs get, and about as big as the largest captive salties.
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Out of the probable billions of allosaurs that lived, we've got remains of HOW many? The chances of huge freak allosaurs being found are close to zero. Finding a croc like Gustav is damned hard. They exist, but science scarcely gets the chance to see them. The question would really be about the forms the largest allosaurs took--length vs bulk.
As for the giant sauropods; the same rules apply. While we have found the partial remains of true giants, like Argentinosaurus, Alamosaurus, Mamenchisaurus and so on, Parabrontosauropodus, the Plagne tracks, and the Broome tracks provide tantalizing hints of truly colossal brutes that roamed the Earth.
Thus, my penchant for giant dino specimens in many of my pics has a solid basis in fact and evidence.
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Granted, giant crocodiles are impressive. But if someone asked you "How big is are Nile Crocodiles?" you wouldn't give out Gustav's measurements because they are not typical of Nile Crocodiles.
Just like 35-40 foot allosaurs like the ones described in children's dinosaur books do not represent the vast majority of Allosaurus specimens.
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As the kind of artist I am, just drawing only the average is, IMO, a futile exercise in mediocrity. Think about it.
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Yeah, Allosaurus is particularly victimized by the maximum size creep phenomena. For most allosaurs 28 feet is closer to the maximum (plenty of Big Al-sized specimens that are in the 20-24 foot range).
I will say this though - the term "average size" is itself problematic, because it implied a statistically valid sample size, which we lack for more than 95% of all dinosaur species. Allosaurus is one exception though, since we have Cleveland-Lloyd, which not only has a statistically significant number of specimens but also constrains the sample in time and geography, making it likely that we are looking at a true population.
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I tend to think most researchers accept Saurophaganax to be valid. People seem to forget that there are two giant Allosaurs in the Morrison, one that was close to A. fragilis (Allosaurus "amplexus") and Saurophaganax.
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I wouldn't go so far as to say that "most" paleontologists accept Saurophaganax. Perhaps a plurality (I'm pretty ambivalent myself until more material is published to justify it), but I don't know almost anyone who believes that Saurophaganax and A. amplexus are actually separate species. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it doesn't have much in the way of tangible support at this point.
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I did say 'researchers' rather than simply laymen or palaeontologists with an opinion.
All I know is that most (though not all) papers published since Chure coined the name have accepted Saurophaganax as valid while, as far as I'm aware, the remains of Allosaurus "amplexus" show no sign of being anything other than Allosaurus. You can only go on what's there.
So far, the latter is lumped with A. Fragilis and the former is its own genus. Something's not right.
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Well Chure's paper was in 1995, and David Smith has published several papers since then attempting to refute the idea, so in terms of raw publication count I'd say the opposite - there are more papers claiming it's Allosaurus amplexus (or even just a big A. fragilis) than there are primary literature papers supporting Saurophaganax.
Now I was instead referring to my own conversations with theropod workers - by and larger there is a "wait and see" approach, with researchers wanting additional material that has been collected to be formally described. Tom Holtz did recognize Saurophaganax as valid in his theropod chapter in The Dinosauria 2nd edition, and there's no reason why it shouldn't be, but again we really need more information.
But no one that I know of has suggested that there are two giant allosaurs with different evolutionary lineages - if Saurophaganax is valid then presumably all "A. amplexus" material goes with it (perhaps the binomial would have to change to Saurophaganax amplexus?), and if it turns out to just be Allosaurus than all the material would presumably fall under an existing species name (e.g. amplexus, or fragilis).
Not that it's impossible that there were two giant allosaur species, just there isn't anyone making that claim right now AFAIK.
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Maybe it's just the more recent papers I know of, then. Last year's SVP abstracts talked of a 'new' Morison Allosaur with a robust skull, perhaps it will tell us more when and if it gets published.
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this is cool
what about Parasaurolophus?
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My favorite dinosaur is Apatosaurus, because it's really big.
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Less than people sized, hooray!
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