Volumetric estimate for Giganotosaurus

During my sweeping tweaks to my carcharodontosaurid reconstructions I decided to do a volumetric estimate for my updated reconstruction of Giganotosaurus carolinii. Giganotosaurus carolinii (MUCPv-ch1, holotype) multiview for GDI. For the dorsal view and the anterior views of the limbs, I took the scanned Acrocanthosaurus skeleton from Bates et al. (2009), scaled and modified to …

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Edwin’s two-beamed sauropod

In 1985, Jim Jensen formally described three new sauropod taxa from the Dry Mesa quarry (Colorado) of the Morrison Formation: Supersaurus vivianae, Ultrasauros mcintoshi, and Dystylosaurus edwini. The first two were synonymised in 1996 when the Ultrasauros holotype was found to belong to Supersaurus. This post will cover Dystylosaurus. Dystylosaurus edwini ("Edwin's two-beamed reptile") was …

Size of the “duck titans”

The Late Cretaceous hadrosaur Edmontosaurus annectens got big. Really big. What most people imagine when they think of how large E. annectens got is based on AMNH 5730, a complete skeleton erected as the type of the Anatotitan copei, now understood to be the adult ontogimorph of E. annectens. It is commonly estimated at being …

Tetrapod body densities and updates to mass estimations

Volumetric methods are currently our best bet at estimating the body masses of long extinct animals, short of somehow achieving reliable time travel and weighing them on scales. Naturally, figures on specific gravities - relative densities, usually relative to water - are vital for converting volume estimates from modelled animals to body masses. This isn't …

Lipped dinosaurs and the “replaceable teeth” argument

Those that have been following my works closely might have noticed that I updated most of my dinosaur skeletal reconstructions with extraoral or lip tissues. I first added lips on a skeletal reconstruction some two years ago with my Moschops reconstruction, but I've held off of illustrating them on my dinosaur skeletal reconstructions as the …

A spinosaur’s tale(tail)

Ever since its discovery by Ernst Stromer in 1915, the giant theropod dinosaur Spinosaurus aegyptiacus has stood out from most others due to its extremely tall neural spines, making its way into the gallery of stock dinosaurs. The original holotype specimen (IPHG 1912 VIII 19), which was unfortunately blown to bits by World War 2 …

Prenocephale & Stegoceras growing up

Pachycephalosaur ontogenic processes are pretty normal, it turns out, based on the available data. This is the ontogenic process proposed by Evans et al. (2017) for the Asian pachycephalosaur Prenocephale: It has been suggested (Longrich et al. 2010) that the flat-headed Homalocephale was a juvenile ontogimorph of Prenocephale, however this was not supported by the …

Reconstruction of Yongjinglong, 2020

In the last two posts, I dealt with the phylogenetic affinities of the Chinese titanosauriform Yongjinglong datangi, as well as the probable proportions of the animal indicated by the preserved material known so far. This third, and hopefully final for a long while, part of the series will finish up with the full body reconstruction. …

Proportions of Yongjinglong

Last post, I dealt with the phylogenetic affinities of the titanosauriform Yongjinglong, and my history with reconstructing the animal. It went through some crazily proportioned phases there...but that was when I reconstructed it as a saltasaur, based on the information available then. But now that it has been reevaluated as a euhelopodid, what does that …

The affinities and my past reconstructions of Yongjinglong

In early 2014 a description of a new Chinese titanosaurian taxon, Yongjinglong datangi, was published by Li-Guo Li and his colleagues. This Early Cretaceous sauropod stood out from most others by the sheer proportional length of its 194-centimetre (188 cm in a straight line measurement) scapulacoracoid, which would have given it a deep chest in …