from Hacker News

'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered

by namzo on 5/17/14, 9:18 AM with 42 comments

  • by HillOBeans on 5/17/14, 2:32 PM

    Does anyone else here ever wonder if some of these "new" dinosaurs are really just re-discoveries of known dinosaurs? The article even mentions that the skeletal remains are incomplete. What if a number of these sauropods are really all the same species, albeit at different stages of their life? Is size alone enough to create a new classification? Perhaps growth continued throughout the life of a sauropod, and the largest ones were just the oldest?

  • by spindritf on 5/17/14, 2:57 PM

    So what's their secret? How did they manage to feed themselves? Were they living sparsely? Was bioshpere denser then? Were they capable of eating just about anything?

    And how was such massive size selected for? Is it just a matter of warmer climate and a feedback loop with larger and larger predators?

  • by pdevr on 5/17/14, 7:47 PM

    From the BBC article: Weighing in at 77 tonnes, it was as heavy as 14 African elephants, and seven tonnes heavier than the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus.

    According to the Wikipedia page about Dinosaur size[1], the biggest (and longest) dinosaur is Amphicoelias fragillimus (at 122 tons), not Argentinosaurus. So, won't this new dinosaur be the second heaviest?

    [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_size#Heaviest_dinosaur...

  • by dfc on 5/17/14, 3:09 PM

    The crazy thing is despite being 10 meters longer than a blue whale this puny landlubber is still 100 tonnes lighter.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale

  • by jcromartie on 5/18/14, 2:26 AM

    I'm really fascinated by the possibilities of paleontological discoveries. We have excavated such a minuscule portion of our planet (you might just round it down to 0%) that there absolutely must be an enormous amount of fantastic things out there waiting to be discovered.

    I hope we can develop things like clear underground imaging from aircraft, and start finding more and more of these incredible types of discoveries.

  • by jschuur on 5/17/14, 1:28 PM

    Nature has an order.

  • by blisterpeanuts on 5/17/14, 1:40 PM

    We need to clone these beasts. Would love to have grilled dino meat some day!