Tiny-rannosaurus Rex: Why Dinosaurs May Not Have Been As Huge As You Thought

[Linda Dahlberg]

Tiny-rannosaurus Rex: Why Dinosaurs May Not Have Been As Huge As You Thought

[Linda Dahlberg]

Tiny-rannosaurus Rex: Why dinosaurs may not have been as big as Hollywood films suggest

By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 1:34 AM on 22nd June 2009

    * Comments (0)
    * Add to My Stories

Dinosaurs may not have been as monstrously big as scientists and Hollywood film directors would have us believe.

Scientists believe the original method used to calculate dinosaur mass was flawed.

As a result of the mistake, some dinosaurs may have been oversized, it is claimed.



Scientists recalculated the Diplodocus's weight at 27 per cent less than previously thought

[Linda Dahlberg]

 Widely-cited estimates for the mass of Apatosaurus louisae, one of the largest dinosaurs, may be double that of its actual mass, say the researchers.

Instead of weighing 38 tonnes, Apatosaurus may have tipped the scales at a relatively puny 18 tonnes.

Palaeontologists have for 25 years used a published statistical model to estimate body weight of giant dinosaurs and other extraordinarily large animals in extinct lineages,' said lead researcher Dr Gary Packard from Colorado State University in the US.

'By re-examining data in the original reference sample, we show that the statistical model is seriously flawed and that the giant dinosaurs probably were only about half as heavy as is generally believed.'

The 'reference sample' consisted of 33 species of quadruped mammal, ranging in size from a rodent weighing 47 grams to an elephant weighing almost 4,000 kilograms.

[Linda Dahlberg]

The Tyrannosaurus Rex in a scene from the film 'Jurassic Park' may not have been quite so enormous in real life

Scientists extrapolated measurements of these animals to estimate the body mass of dinosaurs.

But a mathematical mistake involving logarithms meant that the dinosaur estimates were much too high, according to Dr Packard's team.

Other dinosaurs were also brought down to size by the new calculations. They included Styracosaurus, reduced by 21% from 4,200 kilograms to 3,300kg, and Diplodocus, which shed 27% of its weight and fell from 5,500kg to 4,000kg.

The research appears today in the Journal of Zoology, published by the Zoological Society of London.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1194519/Tiny-rannosaurus-Rex-dinosaurs-big-Hollywood-films-suggest.html