Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Analysis Shows Dinosaurs Not As Heavy As Previously Believed.

Posted by samzenpus on from the he's-not-heavy-he's-my-dinosaur dept.

Cognitive Dissident writes "Discovery.com has an article on a new study using computer modeling to estimate the actual amount of flesh needed to cover the skeletons of dinosaurs. Based on a comparison with modern animals, it indicates that these animals could have weighed dramatically less than has been previously estimated. 'A huge Brachiosaur, once thought to weigh 176,370 pounds, is now believed to have weighed 50,706 pounds.' That's only about two-and-a-half times the weight of a modern African elephant. If other evidence can be reconciled with this, many estimates of the ecosystems dinosaurs lived in will also have to be revised."

4 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Dino Booty by pd0x · · Score: 5, Funny

    Dinosaurs. Not heavy, just big boned.

  2. What about footprints? by fotoguzzi · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Is enough known about footprint formation to estimate the mass of the creature that made them?

    [Sorry if this is a repeat. I do not see my first attempt.]

    --
    Their they're doing there hair.
  3. Elephant metric system by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    pounds? for a minute there I thought we were talking sience...

    Let's make the African elephant unit a standard.

  4. Precision by Convector · · Score: 5, Informative

    The masses given equate to 80000 kg and 23000 kg respectively. Or 80 and 23 (metric) tons. Two significant figures. Not more. No doubt those were the numbers originally supplied by the scientists, and the author of TFA converted it to pounds for the typical American reader without understanding how precision works. This happens all the time in the popular press. Clearly you can't estimate the weight of a creature you've never seen to within 1 lb. Your standard human's weight fluctuates by more than that over the course of a day.