I was a “dinosaur nut” as a child, but have not kept up my paleontological pursuits as an adult, so my knowledge is very dated. I remember the most massive dinosaur known in the late 1960s was the brachiosaur, which was huge but was still outclassed in size by the modern-day blue whale. I recall scientists finding even bigger sauropods and labelling them “supersaurus” and “ultrasaurus”, but I forget how much bigger than the brachiasaurus they were supposed to be. Could someone fill me in on the relative size and mass of the “newer” sauropod finds, and how they compare to the blue whale? How tall were they, How long were they, and how much did they weigh?
(I know it is like comparing apples and oranges, since the whale is aquatic and does not have to support its weight like the dinos did, but that was always the comparison that was made in my old dinosaur books!)
Googling “largest dinosaur” generates links claiming maximum weights around 60 tons. A similar search for the largest whale suggest that one female blue whale was estimated to weight 190 tons.
So the dinos still have some catch-up to do.
Damn, I thought this was gonna be one of those versus threads.
Blue whale, if prepared…
Simply put, no terrestrial animal can ever approach the sheer bulk of a blue whale – living in water is a primary reason Big Blues can get as big as they do, after all.
Argentinosaurus is, currently, typically considered the “biggest” dinosaur. It is speculated to have been at least 114 feet long (the skeleton is incomplete, thus the speculation, but what is available is similar in form and proportion to Diplodocus [which, because it is currently the largest dinosaur for which we have a complete skeleton, could be considered the unambiguously largest]) and may have weighed somewhere between 80-100 tons.
No, that should be: Dinosaur… if prepared.
Aw, man.
I was hoping to learn about “Jesus fishes.”