Giant titanosaurs were just ridiculous

Here’s Mike with the cast dorsal vertebra of Argentinosaurus that’s on display at the LACM. I tried to get myself equidistant from both Mike and the vert when I took the photo, but even I couldn’t quite believe it when I looked at it on my laptop. Surely, I thought, there must be some subtle foreshortening going on, to make the Argentinosaurus vert look bigger than it is. So I did some cypherin’.

The LACM dorsal has a clearly reconstructed centrum, and in all other ways, including the position of the parapophyses and the slightly reclined neural spine, it’s a good match for this vertebra figured in Bonaparte and Coria (1993: fig. 2). The scale bar there is 50cm. In my scan, it’s 242 pixels, and the total height of the vertebra is 800 pixels, or 1.65 meters, or 5’5″. Mike’s about 1.8 meters, and the photo confirms that he’s a little taller than the vertebra, but not by much. I think that photo is a pretty accurate representation of the size of the vertebra relative to a normal human being Mike.

Which is kinda crazy. I’m no stranger to big vertebrae — my first project turned out to be Sauroposeidon, and I’ve spent more time looking at Giraffatitan and Supersaurus verts than is probably healthy — but damn. Even I am used to big vertebrae that are still smaller than a person. Fair play to you, Argentinosaurus.

(I’m contractually obligated to remind everyone that despite frequent claims to the contrary, Argentinosaurus is still the largest dinosaur known from measurable bones.) 

Reference

Bonaparte, J.F. and Coria, R.A. 1993. Un nuevo y gigantesco saurópodo titanosaurio de la Formación Río Limay (Albiano-Cenomaniano) de la Provincia del Neuquén, Argentina. Ameghiniana 30(3):271-282.