

'Biggest dinosaur ever' discovered - namzo
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-27441156

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HillOBeans
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?

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mediocregopher
I think you'll find this ted talk interesting, as it explores that exact idea:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_shape_shifting_dinosaur...](http://www.ted.com/talks/jack_horner_shape_shifting_dinosaurs)

It's also pretty entertaining to watch

~~~
HillOBeans
Yes. This. This is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking...

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spindritf
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?

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givan
I don't know what was different before but also humans were bigger
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_of_Castelnau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_of_Castelnau)

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eponeponepon
Nothing was different. The "Giant of Castelnau", even if he/she was _actually_
as tall as the discoverer _conjectured_ , wasn't wildly outwith the recorded
range of human height - Robert Wadlow was 8'11" (2.72m) when he died, and was
only 22. It's completely plausible to me that someone afflicted by the same
disorder as Wadlow could've reached 3.5m just by being lucky enough to live
longer, and it's also completely plausible to me that it could've happened
more than once in the vast, _vast_ swathe of human history about which we know
next to nothing.

Scant evidence that _a human_ was once very large certainly isn't evidence
that "humans were bigger", and that in turn wouldn't be much evidence that a
difference in the environment was causing it.

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learc83
>It's completely plausible to me that someone afflicted by the same disorder
as Wadlow could've reached 3.5m just by being lucky enough to live longer,

That's not plausible at all. Robert Wadlow as at the very limits of human
height. He already numerous medical problems caused by his height and needed
leg braces just to walk.

There is no way a bronze age man with access to bronze age medical care was
able to live long enough to grow nearly 3 feet taller than Wadlow.

Since weight doesn't scale linearly with height, a 12' tall man would be
_enormous_. Robert wadlow weighed nearly 500 pounds. A 12' tall man would
weigh much much more than that.

I think there are only 2 real possibilities to explain the giant. Either he
wasn't really as tall as the discoverer thought, or something was different to
allow him to get that tall.

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daniel-cussen
I know little about the subject, but I'm sure there are differences between
the limits of human height and the limits of biped primate height. If the
giant of Castelnau were, as claimed, part of a "race of giants," it is not
unreasonable to think this group explored the limits of biped height more
profoundly, as a group, given that they could eliminate some (but not all) of
the problems that height suggested.

On the latter point:

"There is no way a bronze age man with access to bronze age medical care was
able to live long enough to grow nearly 3 feet taller than Wadlow."

You don't know that. Even in antiquity, with Iron Age medical care, men
commonly lived to 100 years, with the absolute limit, as placed by the
Etruscans, at 110 years, thus defining the Etruscan century at this number.
Now, perhaps if the man in question was a giant there would be intrinsic
difficulties in being gigantic, but natural selection within his tall genetic
group could, as a group, overcome many of them. This is a very different
situation that Robert Wadlow's, who did not come from exceptionally tall
parents. If a group has selective pressure to become tall, it's an entirely
different matter from an individual accidentally becoming tall.

Keep in mind there have been around 60 billion Homo Sapiens Sapiens, most of
them outside historical record, and in prehistory, very isolated. This can
commonly lead to vast phenotype differences. I would have to see stronger
evidence to rule out that an adapted giant biped cannot reach 15 feet.

~~~
learc83
>I would have to see stronger evidence to rule out that an adapted giant biped
cannot reach 15 feet.

I didn't say an adapted biped can't reach 15 feet, but a modern human with a
pituitary tumor cannot. Which is what the OP suggested. There are too many
health problems associated with 9' giants of Wadlow's type for bronze age
medicine to overcome, much less 12' or 15' giants.

>You don't know that. Even in antiquity, with Iron Age medical care, men
commonly lived to 100 years, with the absolute limit, as placed by the
Etruscans, at 110 years

I'm not talking about the lifespan of a normal human who happens not to
develop any terminal illnesses, I'm talking about the lifespan of a giant with
a pituitary tumor. At the extremes they have too many medical problems to live
anywhere near a normal lifespan. Wadlow could barely walk, he couldn't feel
his legs so he constantly developed blisters (this is what eventually killed
him by the way), and like all extreme giants he had heart problems because his
heart was enlarged and couldn't handle his pumping blood throughout his
enormous frame.

Keep in mind these are the problems with a 9' giant. Now imagine the medical
problems of a 12' giant. He would be a third taller and probably at least 2
times heavier. There is no way someone like that is going to survive in the
bronze age, unless he is either of a subspecies that is adapted to growing
that tall, or conditions were somehow different.

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eponeponepon
> At the extremes they have too many medical problems to live anywhere near a
> normal lifespan.

Absolutely, yes - and, given that the normal lifespan has been three score and
ten for about as far back as we can see, and given that Wadlow managed only
one score and two, what're the odds that nobody with Wadlow's afflictions ever
managed longer?

My point is, Wadlow's death was effectively a matter of poor luck - a blister
popped up and went septic that he didn't notice _soon enough_ , but others had
previously been spotted and dealt with. Who's to say that no Iron Age 20 year
old could possibly do better?

~~~
learc83
>My point is, Wadlow's death was effectively a matter of poor luck - a blister
popped up and went septic that he didn't notice soon enough, but others had
previously been spotted and dealt with.

It wasn't a matter of luck, it was because of his condition that he couldn't
feel his feet and thus developed blisters. It was just a matter of time until
one of his blisters or other feet injuries got infected. And in the bronze age
with no knowledge of germ theory, much less antibiotics, these infections
would likely prove lethal.

Robert Wadlow wouldn't have lived very long in a tribe in ancient France with
a condition that caused chronic blisters and foot wounds. Furthermore
gigantism causes extremely high blood pressure leading to varicose ulcers in
the legs and again, infection.

However, the blister alone wasn't what killed him, he had an autoimmune
problem caused by his disorder that contributed to his death, and he had an
enlarged heart and was generally unhealthy.

>Who's to say that no Iron Age 20 year old could possibly do better?

It's not do better, it's significantly better with vastly inferior medicine.
Even if his growth rate remained at the rate it was during the last few years
of his life he would have to have lived almost 20 more years to grow another 3
feet. In addition his growth rate most likely would have slowed or stopped
eventually.

If he had continued growing the strain on his skeleton and circulatory system
would have killed him way before he got to 12'. This kind of gigantism is a
disorder that causes immense strain on the body, humans just aren't build to
handle that level of growth hormone.

Have you noticed that there are only 3 people in all of recorded history who
reached 8.5' tall. The reason is because that is basically the upper limit of
what is survivable.

Even if it were possible for a 12' tall man to live, given a population 10
times larger (all the people who ever lived compared to all those born in the
20th century) what's the chance that this population produced a man 3 feet
taller than the tallest in recorded history--Keeping in mind that people with
this disorder would have been likely to die even earlier than the giants of
the modern era due to the lack of any semblance of modern medicine.

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pdevr
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...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinosaur_size#Heaviest_dinosaurs)

~~~
Zitrax
That estimate seem to have been based on a single bone that was described in
the 1870s, a bone that is now lost.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphicoelias_fragillimus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amphicoelias_fragillimus)

~~~
pdevr
Got it, thanks to your and tootie's replies.

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dfc
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](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_whale)

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dredmorbius
Sea creatures don't need to support their own weight.

Though I'm anything but expert on the topic, my understanding is that many
dinosaurs were surprisingly light-weight for their size, and masses of many
dinosaurs have been revised downward. As ancestors of birds, whose own bodies
are generally of very low mass, and incorporate interesting features (hollow
bones and internal air sacs) this isn't entirely surprising.

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jcromartie
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.

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jschuur
Nature has an order.

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

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Yetanfou
Why bother, it'll taste like chicken anyway...

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Yetanfou
Hmmm, judging by the number of down-votes on my "it'll taste like chicken"
comment I have the feeling I need to remind some of the evolutionary
grandparents of the humble chicken. Remember that chickens, being birds, most
likely are descended from small carnivorous dinosaurs. While the mentioned
dinosaur is a vegetarian sauropod, both share a common ancestor.

~~~
DanBC
But dinosaurs share a common ancester with humans. And we taste like pork, not
chicken.

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Torn
What common ancestor? You risk going so far back your suggestion is
meaningless

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dredmorbius
~ 320 - 315 mya, amniotes.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_mammals#The_ances...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_mammals#The_ancestry_of_mammals)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amniote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amniote)

