Biggest dinosaur yet found

[rhombus]

According to BBC News, palaeontologists have found the fossilized remains of a large titanosaur, a type of large herbivorous sauropod, that exceeds the calculated weight of the previous record holder, Argentinosaurus, by about 7 tons.  It will be interesting to see if this weight estimate holds up as more details are uncovered.

To give you some idea of the size of this specimen, here is an image from the BBC of a palaeontologist resting on one of its bones:

[jansenov]

I wonder where is the physiological limit of terrestrial animal size.

[Mumbling]

That's huge.

[Kor]

That is huge indeed.  Thanks for posting the news here.

[Nick22]

130 feet long and weighed 90 tons, for comparison an african elephant weighs 5.5 tons. so this thing weighed more than 16 elephants and was  almost half a football field in length. absolutely massive

[rhombus]

I wonder where is the physiological limit of terrestrial animal size.

That is a good question.  One of the major reasons why dinosaurs could get so massive (in particular the sauropods) is because they probably had a respiratory system similar to the avian system, which is much more efficient than the mammalian equivalent.  In fact, if the sauropods had had the mammalian respiratory system then they would have needed lungs around the size of their bodies in order to maintain themselves.  

As for the maximum size based upon physical variables, that is actually a very good question.  I have been unable to find a peer-reviewed paper on that particular subject, but I did find this paper which goes into some of the considerations involved in attempting to answer that question.  It is not peer-reviewed and it is a bit dated (1985) but it provides some useful information to consider.

[LBTDiclonius]

And this is why I love Dinosaurs. This thing is gigantic and I love it. Thanks for sharing.

[jansenov]

Thanks, rhombus.