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'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered

bbc.com

1–10 of 44 posts

Re: 'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered

#5
Does anyone else here ever wonder if some of these "new" dinosaurs are really just re-discoveries of known dinosaurs? The article even mentions that the skeletal remains are incomplete. What if a number of these sauropods are really all the same species, albeit at different stages of their life? Is size alone enough to create a new classification? Perhaps growth continued throughout the life of a sauropod, and the largest ones were just the oldest?

Re: 'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered

#9
So what's their secret? How did they manage to feed themselves? Were they living sparsely? Was bioshpere denser then? Were they capable of eating just about anything?

And how was such massive size selected for? Is it just a matter of warmer climate and a feedback loop with larger and larger predators?

Re: 'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered

#10

Does anyone else here ever wonder if some of these "new" dinosaurs are really just re-discoveries of known dinosaurs? The article even mentions that the skeletal remains are incomplete. What if a number of these sauropods are really all the same species, albeit at different stages of their life? Is size alone enough to create a new classification? Perhaps growth continued throughout the life of a sauropod, and the la…

Sure it's possible.

The scientists that study this kind of thing try to check for similarities and classify them as the same or different when appropriate.

They probably classify them as different if the time they lived (based on the surrounding rock they were found in) or their bone structures is sufficiently different from anything previously discovered.

It's also a lot easier to merge two classifications rather than split a group into two.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanosauriformes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauropoda

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