“Move over T-rex, see you later Stegosaurus – scientists have announced the Argentinosaurus as the heavyweight champion of dinosaurs.

Weighing in at 90 tonnes and walking the Earth around 90 million years ago, the long-necked herbivore is officially the largest known land creature in the planet’s history.

Scientists have unveiled body weight estimates for 426 different dinosaur species using a formula based on the thickness of their leg bones.

It allowed them to confirm the Argentinosaurus as the biggest of them all.

Oxford University palaeontologist Dr Roger Benson, who led the study, says the dinosaur weigh-in included species ranging from small bird-like dinosaurs to well-known carnivores such as the Tyrannosaurus rex.

The Tyrannosaurus rex, which weighed 7 tonnes, was the largest meat-eating dinosaur in the study and is also the largest known land predator of all time, but it is small in comparison to the Argentinosaurus.
Argentinosaurus Photo: A worker prepares parts of the skeleton of an Argentinosaurus, which lived 90 million years ago, at the Museum Koenig in Germany. (Reuters)

“Argentinosaurus, that’s the champion,” Dr Benson said. “It’s colossal.”

A sparrow-sized bird called Qiliania, which lived about 120 million years ago in China, earned the distinction of being the smallest dinosaur, weighing a mere 15 grams.

Dr Benson said Argentinosaurus, which roamed around South America, was about 6 million times the weight of Qiliania and that both still fit within the dinosaur family.

“That seems amazing to me,” he said.

Large dinosaurs first appeared about 228 million years ago during the Triassic period and grew bigger during the ensuing Jurassic period, then disappeared at the end of the Cretaceous period about 65 million years ago.

The mass extinction, caused by an asteroid that hit Mexico, doomed most creatures but some bird-like dinosaurs survived.

Dr Benson says this study underscores the reasons that birds made it while their bigger dinosaur brethren did not.

“It might be that they were simply much more ecologically diverse and that could have helped them survive an extinction.”

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http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-07/the-heavyweight-champion-of-dinosaurs/5435402

Lame opening, “Move over T-Rex”. There was never a time when T-Rex was considered among the very large dinosaurs.

Yes, but ‘T-rex’ comes to mind straight away when some people think ‘dinosaur’ … so much so that we no longer call it by its whole binomen, Tyrannosaurus rex.

And there are probably some lay people who think T-rex was a big dinosaur, especially given the way it has been portrayed in some TV shows/movies… as being a big, predatory oaf.

dv said:

Lame opening, “Move over T-Rex”. There was never a time when T-Rex was considered among the very large dinosaurs.

diddly-squat said:

dv said:

Lame opening, “Move over T-Rex”. There was never a time when T-Rex was considered among the very large dinosaurs.

Ah yes, and memes like this don’t really help! :D

>>>And there are probably some lay people who think T-rex was a big dinosaur
<<<

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well this T-Rex was huge in its day & can be considered a big dinodsaur now extinct
.
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The_observer said:

>>>And there are probably some lay people who think T-rex was a big dinosaur
<<<

.
well this T-Rex was huge in its day & can be considered a big dinodsaur now extinct
.
.

Ahaha… yes!
I remember my dad having a T-Rex record or two…
Man, I miss listening to vinyl.

>Dr Benson said Argentinosaurus, which roamed around South America, was about 6 million times the weight of Qiliania and that both still fit within the dinosaur family.
“That seems amazing to me,” he said.<

Mammals are even more amazing. The blue whale is approximately 85,000,000 times the weight of the lightest shrew.

Bubblecar said:

>Dr Benson said Argentinosaurus, which roamed around South America, was about 6 million times the weight of Qiliania and that both still fit within the dinosaur family.
“That seems amazing to me,” he said.<

Mammals are even more amazing. The blue whale is approximately 85,000,000 times the weight of the lightest shrew.

Goliath beetle (larval stage) 115 g
Dicopomorpha echmepterygis (adult) 200 ng

ratio of about 600 000 000

seems them paleontologists are easily impressed…

> scientists have announced the Argentinosaurus as the heavyweight champion of dinosaurs

Haven’t we already known some bigger ones than Argentinosaurus for many decades?

Yes. Here’s what Wikipedia says:

Amphicoelias at 60 metres long far outdoes in both weight and length:
Argentinosaurus at 35 metres, Mamenchisaurus at 35 metres, Supersaurus at 33 metres and Sauroposeidon at 28 metres.

Ah, I see what the problem is with Amphicoelias,

“the only fossil remains were lost at some point after being studied and described in the 1870s, evidence survives only in drawings and field notes.”