WASHINGTON: Sauropods, those familiar plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks, long tails and four pillar-like legs, were the biggest land animals in Earth's history, reaching 30-36m long and weighing as much as a tractor-trailer. A new study has calculated for the first time the number of different sauropo
WASHINGTON: Sauropods, those familiar plant-eating dinosaurs with long necks, long tails and four pillar-like legs, were the biggest land animals in Earth's history, reaching 30-36m long and weighing as much as a tractor-trailer.
The heavyweight champion was Argentinosaurus, which lived about 95 million years ago in - you guessed it - Argentina, and weighed about 76 metric tonnes. Next were Brachiosaurus, at 63 metric tonnes, and Barosaurus, at 60 metric tonnes, both living approximately 150 million years ago in western North America.
Based on limb bone dimensions, D'Emic calculated body mass estimates for about 190 of the approximately 250 known sauropod species. "The biggest sauropods varied: in terms of diet, which we know because their teeth and skulls are different shapes; in terms of growth rates and metabolism, which we know from looking at their fossils under the microscope; and in terms of how air-filled their bones were. Like birds today, some of their bones were hollow to save weight, and their chest cavities would have been filled with big air sacs," D'Emic added.
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