![]() ![]() ![]() 'The error bars are also extremely large. 'There might be questions over how valid those extrapolations are,' says Susie. The biggest dinosaurs may have been ten times heavier. In theory, this means that if you had the limb bones of a dinosaur, you could calculate how much it weighed.īut the largest animals we're certain this works for are six tonne African elephants. How much a dinosaur weighed can be estimated in a couple of ways.įor example, in living quadrupeds if you add together the circumference of the humerus (upper arm bone) and femur (thigh bone), the result is directly proportional to the animal's mass. But just because they're closely related doesn't mean the tail or neck were the same length, or they might have been taller – it isn't straightforward.' Palaeontologist Dr Susie Maidment explains, 'The only way you can really do it is to find a closely related dinosaur that we know the whole skeleton of and assume the proportions are the same. It's a trickier task when you've only got a few bones to work with. It is one thing to work out how long a dinosaur was when you have a relatively complete skeleton. Dinosaur size estimates often need to be taken with a pinch of salt. ![]()
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