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Dinosaur unearthed in Argentina could be largest land animal ever

smithsonianmag.com

11–20 of 73 posts

Re: Dinosaur unearthed in Argentina could be largest land animal ever

#15
> long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur called a titanosaur, potentially the largest ever unearthed.

I know the sauropods were mostly vegetarian but I can't help but figure that an animal of that size must have inadvertently swallowed a fair number of smaller animals.

Re: Dinosaur unearthed in Argentina could be largest land animal ever

#16

To put this in context an American football field is 160 ft x 300 ft. If one of these were in a football stadium it would be somewhat cramped.

That's probably not a great visualization, since the actual football green is a tiny fraction of the stadium, and not even all of the actual pitch. The dinosaur is 40% of the length of the playable field, ignoring endzones and other buffer. (don't get me wrong, it's still Very Large, but we're not talking Godzilla v Kong here)

It would be cramped in a basketball court however.

Re: Dinosaur unearthed in Argentina could be largest land animal ever

#17

It could step over an elephant: https://paleontology.us/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/David-Att... from: https://paleontology.us/titanosaurus/

Even on dry land? I thought we were leaning towards most of these giant sauropods being waders?

Re: Dinosaur unearthed in Argentina could be largest land animal ever

#19
post #15

> long-necked, plant-eating dinosaur called a titanosaur, potentially the largest ever unearthed. I know the sauropods were mostly vegetarian but I can't help but figure that an animal of that size must have inadvertently swallowed a fair number of smaller animals.

Even sheep eat small animals (insects) on accident all the time.

Re: Dinosaur unearthed in Argentina could be largest land animal ever

#20
I didn't understand why the existing Patagontitan fossil and this new one weren't considered larger than the largest known Antarctic blue whale at 98 feet.

But it looks like by "largest animal" in this article they mean by weight.

The LONGEST animal is a 150 feet siphonophore, which seems to be some kind of jellyfish looking animal (I'm not sure about where it taxonomically fits on the tree of life though).

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