SpinoInWonderland

As much as I'd like definitive evidence for extraterrestrial civilisations out there, we are very much nowhere near ready to make contact with one.

Different ethnicities, sexualities, neurodivergence, etc. had already been enough to turn humanity against itself. How about life not even from Earth?

A piece of wisdom to live by: If you do not wish people to celebrate your death, it's easy.

Just don't be a terrible person in life. That's it. It costs nothing. As far as we know we only have this one life; DON'T use it to harm innocent people.

For how much of the tail this is, up to 51 caudal positions are known from the animal overall (Wedel & Taylor 2013) and the full tail in life might have had as much as 60 or so. (Díez Díaz et al. 2020)

Tail reconstruction modified from Gunnar Bivens with first 18 caudals shaded blue.

Maximum estimated range of motion angles for Giraffatitan's first 18 caudals

Estimated range of motion for the tail (first 18 caudals) of Giraffatitan brancai, Díez Díaz et al. 2025.

doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

The est. population of bee hummingbirds is about 22,000-66,000 mature individuals based on this source: datazone.birdlife.org/species/fact...

Average adult masses of ~2.6 g for females and ~2 g for males. Even taking the high end of the population est. gives less than 200 kg for the total.

Something mind-blowing regarding theropods in my head: a single adult individual of Giganotosaurus - the holotype specimen - would have been far more massive in life than entire current estimated population of the smallest theropod known (bee hummingbirds).

This chart is one I remember well from my childhood years. I still really wonder how they can somehow come to the idea that Pachycephalosaurus was an animal comparable to or larger than a Tyrannosaurus.

The new Dempsey et al. publication estimates the body mass of NCSM 14345 at about on par with AMNH 5027. And here's their answer to the question: why did the giant carcharodontosaurids have such slim femora compared to similarly-sized or even much smaller tyrannosaurs?

In regards to measurements, MUCPv-Ch1 has a 136.5 cm femur, an est. skull length of 163.4 cm (replicating Canale et al. 2022), and the mounted sacrum is 109.2 cm long (Coria & Currie 2016). MOR 1125/B-rex has a femur 115 cm long and a skull 123 cm long (Persons et al. 2019, Paul 2022).

Except for the fact that the Giganotosaurus type and B-rex have absolutely no business being placed on par or even close in terms of sheer mass with each other. Here's my reconstruction of the G. carolinii type compared with B-rex, represented by a modified Black Beauty from GetAwayTrike.

And it's not just Acrocanthosaurus either. The much larger Giganotosaurus type has a femoral circumference of 52 cm, which when compared to those of tyrannosaurs puts it at slightly over that of B-rex (51.5 cm). FC regression would place the two at approx. similar est. masses (Persons et al. 2019).

Meanwhile, volumetric mass estimation results in, for even an emaciated NCSM 14345 to the point of having bits of bone sticking out of its skin, masses of more than 5.5 t. (Bates et al. 2009). And the est. specific gravity for the model was ~0.914 - Larramendi, Paul, & Hsu (2020) suggests 0.95-0.99.

Giant carcharodontosaurids for the most part have been estimated at rather low masses for their skeletal frames due to their narrower femoral shafts. Carpenter (2000) based on femoral shaft circumference estimates A. atokensis NCSM 14345 at 2.4 t, and Persons et al. 2019 arrives at ~3.6 t.

A recent publication by Dempsey et al. in regards to dinosaur masses, body shapes, and their implications. Based on the estimated centre of mass from their models, giant carcharodontosaurids (e.g. Acrocanthosaurus) would have had more erect, columnar legs than tyrannosaurs.

doi.org/10.1111/brv....

Gorilla Strength: How Strong is a Gorilla/Silverback Gorilla? How Strong is a Gorilla? Are you wondering how strong is a Silverback Gorilla? Well, A fully grown silverbacks can lift 4,000 lb (1,810 kg) on a bench press.

www.wildgorillasafaris.com/how-strong-i...
kabiragorillasafaris.com/gorilla-stre...

This is absurd. This is equivalent to a slightly larger than average bull hippopotamus or an adult white rhino. So they mean to tell me that an animal averaging less than 250 kg can lift those? Really?

I find that gorillas tend to have their strength overblown by pop-sci media to the point of absurdity more than pretty much any other animal. There are websites claiming that gorillas can somehow lift 1810 kg(!!!), which definitely does not pass the sniff test. At all.

I particularly like Greg Paul's depiction of such a hunt.

I think a lot of people tend to, at least subconsciously, put the animals face to face in a Roman colosseum or so as if they were gladiators. In such a scenario I imagine that a Tyrannosaurus would indeed most likely be disadvantaged. But predators of course normally don't hunt like that.

And as for the giant theropods, Tyrannosaurus and Giganotosaurus were inferred by Barrick & Showers (1999) to have had metabolic rates equivalent to mammalian carnivores approximately ~13% or so of their body masses.
doi.org/10.26879/99012

Isotopic ordering in eggshells reflects body temperatures and suggests differing thermophysiology in two Cretaceous dinosaurs - Nature Communications The evolutionary transitions leading to the modern endothermic state of birds and mammals is unclear. Here, the authors use isotopologues from eggshells to determine body temperatures of females durin...

For comparison, the estimated body temperatures for nonavian coelurosaurian theropods: Mongolian oviraptorosaurs yielded about ~32 C (www.nature.com/articles/nco...), while Albertan troodonts yielded ~27-38 C with a mean of ~31 C between the three samples (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC...).

Metabolic skinflint or spendthrift? Insights into ground sloth integument and thermophysiology revealed by biophysical modeling and clumped isotope paleothermometry - Journal of Mammalian Evolution Remains of megatheres have been known since the 18th -century and were among the first megafaunal vertebrates to be studied. While several examples of preserved integument show a thick coverage of fur...

Recent publication by Deak et al. regarding megatheres suggests that they would have done pretty well in temperate regions with dense 10 or 30 mm fur pelts at 4 or so tonnes.

The estimated body temperatures for the megatheres are about ~29-32 C give or take.

doi.org/10.1007/s109...

On sauropod life histories Ah, it’s been a while since I last written and published a post in my blog. Over two years. During that time my motivation to not only write but to work on palaeo-related content in general h…

Haven't published a blog post in more than two years. Haven't produced much in the way of palaeontology-related content for a while. About time I try and break that lull with a post about sauropod life histories.

thesauropodomorphlair.wordpress.com/2024/12/03/o...

Now on Bluesky!

I'll post more from time to time later on, but for now here's my media links from other sites.

Blog: thesauropodomorphlair.wordpress.com
DeviantArt: www.deviantart.com/spinoinwonde...
FFN: www.fanfiction.net/u/13815516/
Ao3: archiveofourown.org/users/SpinoI...