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Scinlao — Biggest Thing Contest
Published: 2012-05-31 23:02:46 +0000 UTC; Views: 2947; Favourites: 32; Downloads: 8
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You may have seen the post of this same picture(but slightly different) that I posted before, except I edited it. I made a slight miscalculation, I admit. Based on the average hight of a story, I made Sauroposeidon at least two stories too tall. This has been rectified.--
In the contest for biggest living thing, many science-fiction writers are eager to put Earth-life to shame. And in their haste, they often fail to do their homework...
In the documentary "Alien Planet"(WATCH HERE: [link]), the Horus Probe Isaac Newton(a.k.a. Ike) runs into the largest known creatures on Darwin IV while crossing the Amoebic Sea. As his camera's first focus on the beastie(Which, for the record, is massive), the narrator takes the liberty to state this: "It's the biggest lifeform ever encountered; anywhere."
...Naturally, being a scientist, and being highly into paleontology(And a little biased towards dinosaurs ), I HAD to figure this out. The Sea-Strider(Pictured here as the darkest non-human being) was stated to be 7-stories high. So, I looked up a dozen references to 7-story building with humans beside them and came up with an average size comparison. Then, I looked up a dozen size references for Amphicoelias(DISCLAIMER: Amphicoelias is known by only a few bones as far as I know, and isn't a verified Sauropod), Sauroposeidon, and Blue Whales.
Then I placed them all together in this simulation to see if the claim of "largest lifeform" held up...
As you can see, it didn't. The Blue Whale is at least very close to the Sea Strider's mass, if not equal. Therefore, the Amphicoelias, whose mass is even more, is evidently far more massive than the Sea-Strider. And I had made it too small in the original picture, so this fact is still true, to an even greater extent.
But, in case they they meant in height, I decided to be generous and verify Sauroposeidon's height, after deviant stated that the Strider was still bigger. As I said, several size references. I discovered that I had made the Saurposeidon too tall. So, while it is exceeded in mass by the Amphicoelias, and possibly the Blue Whale, it is the tallest known life-form ever to dwell in the human imagination. Thank you for saving the docufiction for me
I added a human silhouette and a Horus Probe for scale.
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Comments: 62
You're awesome for doing this
People like you are Internet life.
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The TV special underscored the Sea Strider's actual (as actual as a fictional creature can be anyway) size. In the original book on which the special was based on, the Sea Striders were over 600 feet tall. Even the the most generous estimates of Amphicoelias don't come close.
Still this is an amazing image if only because it puts all of these incredible creatures together. Nice work!
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Yeah it could give the earlier godzillas a run for there money.
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I see. Thanks for the nfo
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Are you sure about this scale?
The size of Amphicoelias is from 40 to 60 meters in lenght, and their tails is almost the size of their bodies, so their bodies had to be from 20 to 30 meters, which is the size of the blue-whale which doesn't seems be the case in your picture.
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Amphicoelias is just about twice that size.
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I had heard A. fragillimus is about 40 to 60 meters in body length, at least. Converting 50 meters to feet(50, to be in the middle of estimates), we get approximately 164 feet. Which, I would assume is the entire body(If not, I severely undersized it...). Blue whales, however average around 30 meters, which comes out to about 98 feet, which is nearly half the length of A. fragillimus.
I thank you for your interest though
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Amphicoelias is likely even larger than that! Based on Barosaurus, scaling indicates an animal ~80 meters long.
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Are you sure. It could be a miscalculation
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