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Biggest Dinosaur Yet Discovered
An anonymous reader quote the BBC:
"Fossilised bones of a dinosaur believed to be the largest creature ever to walk the Earth have been unearthed in Argentina, palaeontologists say. Based on its huge thigh bones, it was 40m (130ft) long and 20m (65ft) tall. Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it was as heavy as 14 African elephants, and seven tonnes heavier than the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus. Scientists believe it is a new species of titanosaur — an enormous herbivore dating from the Late Cretaceous period. A local farm worker first stumbled on the remains in the desert near La Flecha, about 250km (135 miles) west of Trelew, Patagonia."
quit using synonyms for very big. it's getting tedious. thank you.
it was as heavy as 14 African elephants
Next time, could you please use car analogy?
hilarious
Can you give me a size reference in school buses, swimming pools or football fields? And not those European ones, Gridiron please.
how about giving size references in equivalent to a certain number of fat fucking American assholes :P
It wasn't fat, it was big-boned!
With a small herd of these pet pandasauri—and an enormous harvest of coprolignum—one could well up the Great Wall of China in record time. It would still required great hordes or workers, but the workers would be highly obedient. Anyone who slacks off would have their highly-prized long-handled trowel promptly confiscated. With no hall pass, it's crenellation duty for you. From there it's years fighting your way up the rank just to obtain the corner-pocket edge-finishing tool.
Or did it weigh as much as 50 F150 trucks? Come one, we have a metric system for a reason on this planet.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
You've had an opportunity to write "you're a pal and a coelacanth" and you screwed it!
We know that mass generally increases with the cube of a creature's height, and the tensile strength of bone can only support so much pressure from a creature's own weight, so it seems that if there should be some limit to how large a creature in earth's gravity can be (and, for the sake of argument, not being provided any additional buoyancy due to being under water, for instance). This particular creature is alleged over 60 feet tall, and more than 10 times the height of a man, which makes it more than 1000 times the mass of a human. Cross sectional area generally increases with the square of height difference, meaning that more than 10 times as much pressure would be exerted on every square inch of a lateral cross section of bone as what human bones endure. Now granted, this creature was not shaped like a man, and having four legs instead of just two could give it some additional advantage in this department. Additionally, it could have denser bones, capable of supporting more weight, but denser bone structure in turn requires more muscle mass to move, and will tend to further increase the creature's size. Still, it seems like there's still got to be a maximum possible size. Does anyone know what this might be?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
...now that sounds scary
Table-ized A.I.
Newtasaurus Gingrichii?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I just wanted to share a theory of mine about dinosaurs have you ever watched the Flintstones? How about ancient aliens?
Dude! Pass me that joint and the Fritos, man!
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"(...) largest creature ever to walk the Earth have been unearthed (...)"
If some words, manifestly "to this date" or something synonymous to them, are not
missing here, then article's author should prepare to travel to Norway for imminent
Nobel prize.
Funny that you mention Fred Flintstone.
I was just thinking, 'bout an hour ago, about how Fred's 'car', to me, as a kid
looked like (had the same shape as) the provice of Gelderland in Holland.
I forget whether Fred's car was running to the left or to the right.
So now I'm off to google & wikipedia, to do a comparative analysis of said
province and aforementioned 'car', in order to finally put to rest a thought
that's been a 'cognitive harmonic' to me for some 45 odd years.
Don't worry guys, it is just some ancient dinosaur hardly 77 tons in weight and about six stories tall. It can never challenge the current holder of the title "The Biggest Dinosaur", Microsoft.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You know, no matter how large a dinosaur you find, how can you prove that it's the largest?
Not without digging up every cubic meter of the Earth's crust to some reasonable depth.
They do say that Jacob was the father of the 12 tribes of Israel - one bone for a whole new species, so to speak.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Correct - good Christians don't exist.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
They discovered, in a restricted area, around 150 bones from at least 7 individuals.
Which dispenses with your last phrase as well.
A very small number of specimens have been found with collagen and traces of not-incompatible-with-dinosaur DNA. But they were in very fine-grained rocks (silt to clay grade), which tends to inhibit the drying of the material and it's access to oxygen.
From the photos in TFA (which you evidently didn't R), the sediment is reddish and contains white fragments to several centimetres in size ; I interpret that (wearing my hard hat as a professional geologist) as suggesting a well oxidised sediment (from the generally red colour) with granules of carbonate which probably grew in the soil contemporaneously with the deposition and early taphonomy of the bones as they gradually fossilised - a caliche-like deposit. That requires reasonable movement of fluids through the sediment in order to bring the carbonate together.
Both fluid movement and oxidation are bad for preservation of organic material in general, including DNA. I very much doubt that they'd get any ancient DNA out of this material. (They're not excavating in sterile garments, so modern DNA is a near certainty.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
He's released a series on "How to fail at tax evasion and go to jail for it", has he?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"