Biggest Dinosaur has coolest name

[Josh]

I don't know how Jackie Fisher would feel about this

Scientists have discovered the fossilized remains of a new long-necked, long-tailed dinosaur that has taken the crown for largest terrestrial animal with a body mass that can be accurately determined.

Measurements of bones from its hind leg and foreleg revealed that the animal was 65 tons, and still growing when it died in the Patagonian hills of Argentina about 77 million years ago.

“To put this in perspective, an African elephant is about five tons, T. rex is eight tons, Diplodocus is 18 tons, and a Boeing 737 is around 50 tons,” said study author and paleontologist Kenneth Lacovara at Drexel University. “And then you have Dreadnoughtus at 65 tons.”

Dreadnoughtus, meaning “fears nothing,” is named after the impervious early 20th century battleships. Although it was a plant-eater, a healthy Dreadnoughtus likely had no real issues with predators due to its intimidating size and muscular, weaponized tail.



But its enormous bulk also had a downside. Based on the width and strength of its skeleton, toppling over would likely spell death for such a heavy animal.

“If you look at its really big ribs, there's no way they're going to withstand 65 tons of weight on top of them,” he said. “It would have been a catastrophic event in the life of a Dreadnoughtus if it fell over.”

However, it probably didn't do much walking around since its 37-foot-long neck could already provide access to a wide bounty of vegetation.

“How do you come up with a body size that is so enormous when you're a terrestrial animal?” said Luis Chiappe, director of the National History Museum of Los Angeles's Dinosaur Institute, who was not involved in the study. “You need to have a structural design that allows you to support a body like that, and you have to be potentially adapted to eat 24 hours a day, nonstop, with a minimal amount of sleep.”

On the one hand, I am inspired to say that I would totally ride one of these into battle. On the other hand, it would probably just putter along at a couple of miles an hour eating every tree it could reach.

[General Havoc]

Dreadnoughtus? Did Games Workshop start naming dinosaurs?

[Lys]

Fear God and dread nought!

[rhoenix]

Dreadnoughtus? Did Games Workshop start naming dinosaurs?

Do not speak ill of the Emperor's loyal servants.

[Josh]

Not mentioned in this particular article, but they don't think this was a fully matured specimen. The evidence they have suggests that it was still growing.

[LadyTevar]

Yes, the article in the BBC mentions that they have roughly 70% of the dinosaur's bones, so they can tell a lot more about the Dreadnaught than Argentinosaur, which they only have the leg and a few vertebra. This particular Dreadnaught was yet to reach sexual maturity, by their best guess. If they could find the skull, that would be a huge bonus, but it seems like the skull was disarticulated at some point.

[Lys]

This kind of megafauna was enabled by warmer temperatures and higher oxygen content in the atmosphere. More energy in the ecosystem allows for much larger animal life. This thing in particular is large enough that it probably did not have to fear the Tyrannosaurus Rex, being more than ten times the predator's mass. Which is good, because with that kind of bulk I would not well rate its chances of running away.

[LadyTevar]

I have always assumed that the majority of the megafauna's bulk was stomach. They were eating early trees, which were not the most nutrituous of sources then or now. It's very likely they had up to four stomachs, like ruminates today. They may even have had more to process their meals. We assume they were slow due to the inefficency of the food source. They would need to take time for their gut bugs to break down the foliage into something digestible. As big as they are, they would have to keep moving or run out of food. Thus, it's thought they moved slow to conserve what energy they did get out of their diet, and grew big to both process their diet and to prevent predation.

However, we have little idea how long it took the young to reach that size, nor do we know if the theory that they laid far more eggs than reached adulthood is true.