Size Matters: New size estimates & Specimens of the Large Prehistoric Animals

[suspsy]

Haolonggood has already done Edmontosaurus and if that teaser image was any indication, their upcoming Saurolophus is the smaller North American species. So if they're going to go a mega hadrosaur, their best options are Shantungosaurus or Magnapaulia.

[Turkeysaurus]

So basically 11.5 tons for allometric estimates, volumetric estimate 12 - 12.5 tons possible for Goliath

I guess Dan Folkes Giganotosaurus Dentary Specimen estimate is 10,600 kg, not 11,123 kg.

[Turkeysaurus]

"All Hail the King!
Two static images for those that asked! More to follow 🙂.
Meet The largest #Tyrannosaurus yet discovered, shared appropriately enough on the day of the Super Bowl and the premier of the #JurassicWorldRebirth, the latest #JurassicPark franchise movie.
This massive Late #Cretaceous #theropod #dinosaur femur is longer and thicker than any other yet discovered. The morphology indicates it belongs to a #Trex, and what a beast it must have been!
I quickly measured max length using a laser, a traditional cloth tape, and scanning software (no, I am not permitted to share the scan). Each measured between 1368 and 1374 mm long, matching their 1.37 m number at a max length. mm variations on a bone this size always exist in paleo. Millimeters are tiny, and this wasn't a lab-controlled measuring process. Perhaps I was a few mm off on the starting spot, or the table was bumped at my target moved oh-so-slightly. I will recheck when I return and see what I get. But 1.37 is a solid max length #, plus the head is slightly eroded, suggesting it might have had a (very) few more mm to it. ~650 mm least circumference (estimated as I couldn't get my tape all the way around), and a least breadth of 218 mm means these numbers exceed the longest and thickest theropod femora ever discovered. A giant indeed!
It rivals many medium-sized #sauropod dinosaur femora. The femur is often used to calculate weight, the grander the numbers the weightier the animal.
Dubbed Goliath, it lives up to its name. Found in South Dakota as an isolated bone, the entire locality was heavily searched for more of it. Alas, there was none.  As weird as that may sound, we see this with #sauropods, we find a single giant bone and nothing else. Perhaps it was dragged away, or a storm rolled it from the body, none of which was buried. It is maddening when it happens! We just spent a lot of time on a single brach humerus (which to brag for a moment, makes this rex femur look small :-)) looking for more.
This bone is on display at the Tucson Fossil Marketplace through the 16th of Feb.
#FossilCrates #AllHailtheKing #Largestrex"

Fosil Crates Facebook (Dr. Brian Curtice)

[Ajax88]

"All Hail the King!
Two static images for those that asked! More to follow 🙂.
Meet The largest #Tyrannosaurus yet discovered, shared appropriately enough on the day of the Super Bowl and the premier of the #JurassicWorldRebirth, the latest #JurassicPark franchise movie.
This massive Late #Cretaceous #theropod #dinosaur femur is longer and thicker than any other yet discovered. The morphology indicates it belongs to a #Trex, and what a beast it must have been!
I quickly measured max length using a laser, a traditional cloth tape, and scanning software (no, I am not permitted to share the scan). Each measured between 1368 and 1374 mm long, matching their 1.37 m number at a max length. mm variations on a bone this size always exist in paleo. Millimeters are tiny, and this wasn't a lab-controlled measuring process. Perhaps I was a few mm off on the starting spot, or the table was bumped at my target moved oh-so-slightly. I will recheck when I return and see what I get. But 1.37 is a solid max length #, plus the head is slightly eroded, suggesting it might have had a (very) few more mm to it. ~650 mm least circumference (estimated as I couldn't get my tape all the way around), and a least breadth of 218 mm means these numbers exceed the longest and thickest theropod femora ever discovered. A giant indeed!
It rivals many medium-sized #sauropod dinosaur femora. The femur is often used to calculate weight, the grander the numbers the weightier the animal.
Dubbed Goliath, it lives up to its name. Found in South Dakota as an isolated bone, the entire locality was heavily searched for more of it. Alas, there was none.  As weird as that may sound, we see this with #sauropods, we find a single giant bone and nothing else. Perhaps it was dragged away, or a storm rolled it from the body, none of which was buried. It is maddening when it happens! We just spent a lot of time on a single brach humerus (which to brag for a moment, makes this rex femur look small :-)) looking for more.
This bone is on display at the Tucson Fossil Marketplace through the 16th of Feb.
#FossilCrates #AllHailtheKing #Largestrex"

Fosil Crates Facebook (Dr. Brian Curtis)

Once again, we are talking about an animal maybe 14 inches longer than Sue. This would not be a noticable size difference in life. People are really overreacting to this. Also, I really doubt this was a 12 ton animal. The most rigorous reconstructions (not bloggers estimates) of Sue are in the high 8 to low 9 ton range, making Goliath MAYBE 9.9 metric tons.

[Pliosaurking]

Cool to see another giant found, possibly the biggest. Too bad we couldn't find more remains for this monster.

[Turkeysaurus]

By paleonerd01
https://www.deviantart.com/paleonerd01/art/Goliath-the-largest-T-rex-1158708717#comments

[Stegotyranno420]

Curious, can someone remind me what is thought to be the estimated mean length and weight of the genus? (cited please)

I know as a stats student and as a dinosaur nerd i should be able to figure out myself but yeah 😭

[Turkeysaurus]

Curious, can someone remind me what is thought to be the estimated mean length and weight of the genus? (cited please)

I know as a stats student and as a dinosaur nerd i should be able to figure out myself but yeah 😭

I think average T.rex is around 12 m & 8-9 tons.

Average doesn't make much sense though. We don't have enough specimens for measuring average for probably any genus.

Sue is the most complete specimen and at an adult age : 12.3 m, 8.4 to 10 tons depends on measuring method.

[Ajax88]

By paleonerd01

This is why you should never trust deviantart amateurs over actual paleontologists. The silhouette of "Goliath" here is exactly 9% longer than Sue even though the femur is at MAXIMUM 3.7% longer. So this is already over 2x the linear size increase suggested by the actual fossil material, assuming that was even measured accurately. Peer-review exists for a reason.

[Turkeysaurus]

By paleonerd01

This is why you should never trust deviantart amateurs over actual paleontologists. The silhouette of "Goliath" here is exactly 9% longer than Sue even though the femur is at MAXIMUM 3.7% longer. So this is already over 2x the linear size increase suggested by the actual fossil material, assuming that was even measured accurately. Peer-review exists for a reason.

https://www.deviantart.com/paleonerd01/art/Goliath-the-largest-T-rex-1158708717#comments

I have added deviantart link , it says how he came up with these numbers.

Measuring lenght based on a single bone can be dubious even it's a femur.

To be fair his measurements both lenght & weight are similar to others so far.On Vividen video it's also measured as 11.4-12.5 tons and probably 13 plus meters.

Regardless of exact measurements it's cool to have a new largest Tyrannosaurus Rex. (Largest theropod as well so far)

[Stegotyranno420]

Curious, can someone remind me what is thought to be the estimated mean length and weight of the genus? (cited please)

I know as a stats student and as a dinosaur nerd i should be able to figure out myself but yeah 😭

I think average T.rex is around 12 m & 8-9 tons.

Average doesn't make much sense though. We don't have enough specimens for measuring average for probably any genus.

Sue is the most complete specimen and at an adult age : 12.3 m, 8.4 to 10 tons depends on measuring method.

from my understanding, if the sample size is over a certain number and properly distributed, we can predict a confidence interval that can capture with some degree of assurance of a mean of the population.
Tyrannosaurus appears to be one of the few that do fit the criterion of sample size if i can recall. Of course there still are various biases caused by fossilization processes, so while an average size is tenuous, I would not say it "doesnt make much sense". Of course please correct me if im wrong, because my knowledge needs some refreshing

[Torvosaurus]

I think the only difference separating t-rex versus other tyrannosaurs (Daspletosaurus, Albertosaurus, etc.) would be the massive growth rate that starts around 15-20 years of age. It would seem it has two average sizes, one for the smaller, immature specimens and one for the older, mature specimens. Compared to other tyrranosaurs, it seems it would have a smaller average size up to ~15 years of age and a much larger average size above 20. Trying to average the overall size definitely has its merits, but averaging a 1,500-2,000 pound "juvenile" with a 5,000 pound or more adult approximately 5 years later would greatly reduce the average adult size, IMO. The growth difference is much greater than the averages in the dinosaurs mentioned above (in parentheses) because t-rex's growth rate is so much greater during that 5 year span. I would think with t-rex you'd end up with a mean, a median and a mode for both younger t-rexes (<15 years of age) and a mean, a median and a mode for older t-rexes (>20 years of age) that would reflect this growth differential. In Daspletosaurus, Albertosaurus, etc., a single set of numbers would probably be okay as they don't have that huge accelerated growth rate seen in t-rex.

Torvo

[Turkeysaurus]

Curious, can someone remind me what is thought to be the estimated mean length and weight of the genus? (cited please)

I know as a stats student and as a dinosaur nerd i should be able to figure out myself but yeah 😭

I think average T.rex is around 12 m & 8-9 tons.

Average doesn't make much sense though. We don't have enough specimens for measuring average for probably any genus.

Sue is the most complete specimen and at an adult age : 12.3 m, 8.4 to 10 tons depends on measuring method.

from my understanding, if the sample size is over a certain number and properly distributed, we can predict a confidence interval that can capture with some degree of assurance of a mean of the population.
Tyrannosaurus appears to be one of the few that do fit the criterion of sample size if i can recall. Of course there still are various biases caused by fossilization processes, so while an average size is tenuous, I would not say it "doesnt make much sense". Of course please correct me if im wrong, because my knowledge needs some refreshing

I don't know exact numbers but internet says there are 30-40 skeletons have been found out of 1.7 billion T.rexes that roamed the earth. The sample size of skeletally mature speciemens that completed their full growth and them being almost to complete findings like Sue (90%) is abysmal. Some of them just fragmentary. Some of them are subadults or adults that are shown still not stop growing. Even good finds like Scotty (65%) still difficult to measure exact size.

For other dinosaurs even it's even worse.

So basically whichever that stopped it's growth and most complete is most likely the average one.  It's like if we dig up a grave we'll probably find an average sized individual (as long as we know he is old enough to stopped his growth before his death) and not 6'2 or let alone Shaq sized one.

So Sue is most likely an average one. That doesn't mean Scotty, Cope, Bertha or Goliath are that "specially" big though. They are more difficult to measure and whatever numbers we come up probably will be within the range of an average T.rex. I believe for that reason they used Sue or Scotty (the largest ones) to measure what would be maximum sized T.rex can be in a recent paper by David Hone & Jordan Malone.

I hope i explained myself clear, unfortunately english is not my native language.

[Stegotyranno420]

I agree @Turkeysaurus , fro. what i learned we can assume a normal distribution if the sample size is more than 30. But now i think of it, you are right since many are as you said abysmal in quality.
Thank you for the explaination

[Turkeysaurus]

Andrea Cau on Goliath:

"I saw the video featuring the mysterious femur of "Goliath", a T. rex specimen that (coincidentally!) is claimed to be the largest in the world.
I'm not very interested in arguing about which T-rex is the most talented, but as a paleontologist who loves to popularize, I prefer to point out to readers that these phantom estimates are in many cases completely subjective and arbitrary.
In what sense?
The owners of "Goliath" claim that the femur is about 137 cm long. From the images of the fossil (left), it is clear that the bone is incomplete, and is missing much of the trochanteric region and the head. Consequently, it is not clear what those "137 cm" are: the measurement of the preserved part? The estimate of the complete bone? But, most importantly, along which direction was it measured?
If the measurement was taken along the direction from the femoral head to the medial condyle (white arrow marked "?L"), then the bone is not necessarily larger than "Sue's" femur.
[NOTE: I didn't want to put the two femurs at the same scale on purpose because, as I explain below, it is not clear what the actual dimensions of the new specimen are]
"Sue's" right femur is complete, measuring 132 cm from the greater trochanter to the lateral condyle (Brochu, 2003). Don't just read the number, but what it refers to! Note that this measurement is not the same part of the bone that I assume was measured in "Goliath": if we measure "Sue" along the "head-medial condyle" direction we get the same size reported for "Goliath".
So, what is the actual size of this bone? And does it make sense to claim that it is significantly larger than other known specimens? From what we know, I have my doubts.
In conclusion, an incomplete bone, for which it is not specified which points were considered for the measurement, and practically the same size as "Sue" is not the super-giant that is circulating online.
Don't be fooled by this nonsense."


"Update of my previous post about "Goliath". As I suspected, they did not measure from the greater trochanter (the lateral side, which is mostly damaged proximally), but from the articular head (the medial side): this means - as I argued - that the femur is just the same size as Sue's femur."


So according to Cau, Goliath is a Sue sized specimen. He says they spread this false information for selling private fossils. Thomas Holtz agree with his point.


We might have a Paleo Beef  

Andrea Cau (sue sized) vs Pete Larson (largest)

...but then there is Dr.Brian Curtice who said measured this bone himself and he seemed quite sure this was the largest T.rex.
https://x.com/i/status/1888655157015224800

[Rayeknor]

So Rebor's Kiss was 1:35 after all 

[Turkeysaurus]

So Rebor's Kiss was 1:35 after all 

No way.   Kiss is 42 cm according to DinosDragons youtube channell. That would make 14.7 metres! It can be used as an example hypothetically maximum sized T.rex though. (Recent paper by Dr. Mallon & Dr. Hone suggest 70% larger, 25% percent longer than largest found which makes it more than 15 meters lenght)

Also Andrea Cau thinks "Goliath" is a Sue sized specimen, not significantly larger. Some other paleontologist think it's definitely larger. We'll see how that'll turn out.

[Turkeysaurus]

By paleonerd01

This is why you should never trust deviantart amateurs over actual paleontologists. The silhouette of "Goliath" here is exactly 9% longer than Sue even though the femur is at MAXIMUM 3.7% longer. So this is already over 2x the linear size increase suggested by the actual fossil material, assuming that was even measured accurately. Peer-review exists for a reason.

"Thomas Holtz
The silhouette for "Goliath" looks WAY to big!! The linear difference between the femur length of Goliath to Sue is only 3.7% more. Given allometry, the general length and height difference between Goliath and Sue should be **equal to or less than** 3.7% difference."

 

[Turkeysaurus]

Ruben Molina Perez on Goliath

"The mass of a dinosaur is estimated by means of a volumetric model that includes an estimated density. There are other methods such as the bone circumference method, but the latter has been proven inaccurate in various comparisons, so it should no longer be taken into account. For example, in Opisthocoelicaudia of 8.6-9.5 t, it reaches up to 22 t with the other method, and Dreadnoughtus of 35-39 t gives 59 t. The same happens with the mass estimate of Tyrannosaurus Goliath and Cope, there is no "extra" because the femur is relatively thicker, when what really counts is the entire body (the bones are a smaller proportion of the total weight of muscles, integument and others added together). If Sue weighed around 9-10 t, then Goliath could have reached between 10-11.2 t, without an "extra" just because a bone is relatively more robust. For example, in Antarctosaurus giganteus one femur is thicker than the other, this may be due to preservation or anatomical asymmetry, something natural in exceptional growths. Regarding lengths, Goliath could have reached between 12.65-13 m long, if the proportions with Sue remained similar."

[Turkeysaurus]

Giant Theropods list:

Allometric :
11.46 t compared to 8.8 t(scotty) & 8.4 - 8.8 t (sue)

Volumetric:

Goliath based on sue (10.2 t) : 12.342 t - 12.444 t.
Goliath based on scotty (10.45 t): 12.765 t - 12.956 t

Lenght: 12.9-13.1 m