SUE IS DETHRONED!

[suspsy]

Ladies and gentlemen, Sue is officially no longer the world's biggest and oldest specimen of Tyrannosaurus rex! All hail the new king/queen, RSM P2523.8, AKA Scotty from Saskatchewan!

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.24118#.XJQsksF-cn4.facebook

And that's not all:

Here we describe an extremely large and relatively complete (roughly 65%) skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex (RSM P2523.. Multiple measurements (including those of the skull, hip, and limbs) show that RSM P2523.8 was a robust individual with an estimated body mass exceeding all other known T. rex specimens and representatives of all other gigantic terrestrial theropods.

That's right, folks, Tyrannosaurus rex has regained the title of biggest meat-eating dinosaur in terms of mass! 

[Shadowknight1]

Hail to the King!

[Uncle Rex]

Time for a rematch with Spinosaurus! Still the King.

[Faelrin]

Is it just the mass then or is there more to this too? Like I know Giganotosaurus and rexy were neck and neck in some ways before, but different in others (rex is chunkier, etc). Does this then outweigh the Spinosaurus now (or is that one not counted as terrestrial in this case)?

[MLMjp]

That's right, folks, Tyrannosaurus rex has regained the title of biggest meat-eating dinosaur in terms of mass! 

I though it already had that title regained a while ago. Sue´s weight is already superior to every other well documented large theropods if I recall correctly.

Having said that. WHAT?!
This is both exciting and sad, exciting for obvious reasons, sad because Sue is no longer the largest T.rex. She is still the most complete specimen, right?

Also can anyone give us the mass and dimensions of this new king/queen? I can't access to the full paper.

[Shonisaurus]

It is no wonder that this unique theropod (tyrannosaurus rex) is the most famous carnivorous dinosaur of all time. It is the largest and the best preserved and the fiercest of all.

[Concavenator]

That's right, folks, Tyrannosaurus rex has regained the title of biggest meat-eating dinosaur in terms of mass! 

Hasn't it always been considered as such? Since despite it being not as long as the largest carcharodontosaurids,or Spinosaurus, it still had much more weight.

BTW, how long is that specimen? I've searched for it and can't find how long it is

EDIT-Okay, I found it.Apparently its size is 12.1m ,but that's shorter than Sue anyways.So this news is practically irrelevant (aside from the fact that a new Tyrannosaurus specimen has been found ) .We also knew Tyrannosaurus was the biggest in terms of bulk anyways.

[Cretaceous Crab]

Is it just the mass then or is there more to this too? Like I know Giganotosaurus and rexy were neck and neck in some ways before, but different in others (rex is chunkier, etc). Does this then outweigh the Spinosaurus now (or is that one not counted as terrestrial in this case)?

It's like comparing the Nile River in Africa to the Amazon River in South America. In terms of length, the Nile is much longer. But the Amazon is larger in terms of volume.

Also like comparing green anacondas and reticulated pythons; the jury is still out on which one is considered "the biggest," but if you put an anaconda and retic of equal lengths next to each other, the anaconda is the heftier of the two.

Another thing to keep in mind is that no matter what the largest known specimen of any dinosaur is, it is unlikely that we are just finding all the record-sized members of the gene pool. Laws of probability and averages dictate that there were even larger specimens out there.

[DinoToyForum]

I wonder why they didn't provide a simple estimate of its total length compared to other T. rex specimens while they were at it.

This paper focusses on mass but how long was the longest T. rex based on this new data?

[suspsy]

That's right, folks, Tyrannosaurus rex has regained the title of biggest meat-eating dinosaur in terms of mass! 

Hasn't it always been considered as such? Since despite it being not as long as the largest carcharodontosaurids,or Spinosaurus, it still had much more weight.

BTW, how long is that specimen? I've searched for it and can't find how long it is

EDIT-Okay, I found it.Apparently its size is 12.1m ,but that's shorter than Sue anyways.So this news is practically irrelevant (aside from the fact that a new Tyrannosaurus specimen has been found ) .We also knew Tyrannosaurus was the biggest in terms of bulk anyways.

12.1 metres is nearly the same as 12.3 metres, so length is not the core factor here. What matters is mass. Sue has been estimated to weigh 9 tons, but Scotty's estimate is 10 tons. If you saw the two of them alive and walking side by side, you'd be hard-pressed to determine who's bigger, but Scotty wins out in the end. Also, Scotty isn't new; it was discovered back in 1991, excavated in 1994, and there's a mounted cast at the T. rex Discovery Centre in Saskatchewan that's been there since 2012.

Paleontologists and enthusiasts are well aware that T. rex has long been thought to be the heaviest theropod, but many current dinosaur books and museums state that Giganotosaurus or Spinosaurus was heavier. This paper will help get the word out, once the media picks up on it.

So no, not irrelevant at all.

[Faelrin]

Is it just the mass then or is there more to this too? Like I know Giganotosaurus and rexy were neck and neck in some ways before, but different in others (rex is chunkier, etc). Does this then outweigh the Spinosaurus now (or is that one not counted as terrestrial in this case)?

It's like comparing the Nile River in Africa to the Amazon River in South America. In terms of length, the Nile is much longer. But the Amazon is larger in terms of volume.

Also like comparing green anacondas and reticulated pythons; the jury is still out on which one is considered "the biggest," but if you put an anaconda and retic of equal lengths next to each other, the anaconda is the heftier of the two.

Another thing to keep in mind is that no matter what the largest known specimen of any dinosaur is, it is unlikely that we are just finding all the record-sized members of the gene pool. Laws of probability and averages dictate that there were even larger specimens out there.

Very good points here. Thanks. Totally forgot about that second thing too, even though I've seen it mentioned time and time again.

[DinoToyForum]

That's right, folks, Tyrannosaurus rex has regained the title of biggest meat-eating dinosaur in terms of mass! 

Hasn't it always been considered as such? Since despite it being not as long as the largest carcharodontosaurids,or Spinosaurus, it still had much more weight.

BTW, how long is that specimen? I've searched for it and can't find how long it is

EDIT-Okay, I found it.Apparently its size is 12.1m ,but that's shorter than Sue anyways.So this news is practically irrelevant (aside from the fact that a new Tyrannosaurus specimen has been found ) .We also knew Tyrannosaurus was the biggest in terms of bulk anyways.

Where did you find the length estimate?

[suspsy]

That's right, folks, Tyrannosaurus rex has regained the title of biggest meat-eating dinosaur in terms of mass! 

Hasn't it always been considered as such? Since despite it being not as long as the largest carcharodontosaurids,or Spinosaurus, it still had much more weight.

BTW, how long is that specimen? I've searched for it and can't find how long it is

EDIT-Okay, I found it.Apparently its size is 12.1m ,but that's shorter than Sue anyways.So this news is practically irrelevant (aside from the fact that a new Tyrannosaurus specimen has been found ) .We also knew Tyrannosaurus was the biggest in terms of bulk anyways.

Where did you find the length estimate?

FWIW, all the news reports thus far are giving a length of 13 metres.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/sask-scotty-trex-biggest-ever-1.5068830

[Concavenator]

That's right, folks, Tyrannosaurus rex has regained the title of biggest meat-eating dinosaur in terms of mass! 

Hasn't it always been considered as such? Since despite it being not as long as the largest carcharodontosaurids,or Spinosaurus, it still had much more weight.

BTW, how long is that specimen? I've searched for it and can't find how long it is

EDIT-Okay, I found it.Apparently its size is 12.1m ,but that's shorter than Sue anyways.So this news is practically irrelevant (aside from the fact that a new Tyrannosaurus specimen has been found ) .We also knew Tyrannosaurus was the biggest in terms of bulk anyways.

Where did you find the length estimate?

I read about it here:
https://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/m_features/scotty-canadas-home-grown-tyrannosaurus-rex-is-actually-a-female

However,it seems that they were actually wrong.
Curiously enough, when I searched for "Scotty Tyrannosaurus " on Google yesterday I couldn't find any articles that were in the news, I have now searched for it again, and everyone is talking about Scotty now! 

I clicked in National Geographic's post to see what they had to say about it and not a minute had passed by and I could already see all the sensationalism going on." Tyrannosaurus rex was the biggest carnivore dinosaur ever" and more over.
Have these people at NatGeo forgotten they wrote an article in October 2014 announcing that Spinosaurus was the biggest theropod ever discovered?

[DinoToyForum]

The paper doesn't give a length estimate as far as I can see.

And remember, there will be error bars on all these estimates.

[suspsy]

Actually, the 2014 NG article clearly depicted Spinosaurus as weighing 6-7 tons and T. rex weighing 8 tons, so they must have been referring to body length as opposed to mass when they said "biggest."

[GojiraGuy1954]

That doesn't necessarily mean T-Rex was the heaviest. This could just have been one individual that got to this size, so i'm still for #HailKingSpino

[suspsy]

That doesn't necessarily mean T-Rex was the heaviest. This could just have been one individual that got to this size, so i'm still for #HailKingSpino

That's just special pleading. While it is always possible that a larger theropod may have existed, until such a specimen is discovered and described, T. rex is officially the heaviest known one.

Also, Scotty is only slightly heavier than Sue, which means that a relatively large number of T. rexes achieved their size.

[Concavenator]

That doesn't necessarily mean T-Rex was the heaviest. This could just have been one individual that got to this size, so i'm still for #HailKingSpino

I doubt Spinosaurus itself was very heavy.More like the complete opposite.
It was pretty long though

[Syndicate Bias]

I clicked on this assuming something different