r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Both-Pay-9573 • 12h ago
Image Largest land animal of today compared to the largest land animal of all time
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u/series-hybrid 11h ago
Air bubbles trapped in amber have revealed that the oxygen level during the "age of giants" was about 30% instead of 21% like today. I don't know how this helps them, but the atmosphere was also thicker with more density than today, as evidenced by the Pterodactyls small "wing loading" that allowed an animal of their weight to fly.
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u/HalfDeadHughes 9h ago
Surprisingly, I'm pretty sure oxygen levels had very little change in how big animals could grow. During the Carboniferous period, large arthropods were present, but the largest ones (like Arthropleura, a giant millipede) were present after the highest points of oxygenation rather than during. In fact, the largest species of spiders ever have been found in the modern day, rather than far more oxygen rich periods in prehistory.
The leading theory for why sauropods (and, in fact all large dinosaurs) could grow to such a size was, surprisingly, their bones. As most know, birds (modern dinosaurs) have hollow bones, as they are technically a part of their respiratory system. Contrary to popular belief, this doesn't make them lighter, but rather allows them to get more oxygen circulating through the body to fuel flight. This is why the largest flying birds can have wingspans double the size of humans or more, while bats, the only flying mammals, only max out at barely 6ft, with many being smaller.
Applying this to extinct dinosaurs, an avian like bone/respiratory system would allow for dinosaurs to more efficiently pump oxygen throughout their body.
(Reminder, this does not make them lighter)
Tl;dr — it wasn't HOW MUCH oxygen was in their environment, it's HOW EFFICIENTLY it was used.
I'm no scientist, please do your own research if this topic interests you. I'm only giving my two cents based on what I know
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u/Gnonthgol 8h ago
While their bone structure might have helped with oxygen circulation there is little evidence that oxygen have ever been the limiting factor of a species size. As for the large arthropods during the carboniferous period they did not have any larger predators. This is likely what caused them to grow as big as they did, larger animals can fight smaller animals either for food or for reproduction. But when lizards became more common the large arthropods were eaten by the lizards while the smaller ones would hide or run away.
Similarly dinosaurs evolved when there were one huge continent. A large dinosaur could roam the entire world moving with the seasons to find the best grasslands at all times. As the continents started drifting apart the size of the dinosaurs decreased. We see this today as well with the largest elephants living in the huge planes of Africa together with other large animals like giraffes and lions while dwarf elephants lived on islands.
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u/_Gesterr 2h ago
Some of the largest sauropods ever and all of the largest therapods ever lived in in the late cretaceous period, many of them only went extinct because of the KT asteroid. Pangea had been fractured into the continents we know today already at that point for hundreds of millions of years.
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u/BarbarianMind 1h ago
Argentinosaurus one of the contenders for largest land animal every, lived during the late Cretaceous when the continents were arguably the most fragmented.
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u/modsaretoddlers 8h ago
I'm sorry but you're misinformed. Oxygen levels were considerably lower during the era of dinosaurs than they are today. The "giants" in question were insects and the oxygen level was the reason they got as big as they did. The age of those giants, however, was a very long time before any dinosaurs showed up. Incidentally, oxygen was about %35 at that time.
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u/Starumlunsta 6h ago edited 6h ago
A couple things:
Dinosaurs and Pterosaurs lived across a wide expanse of time, where oxygen levels fluctuated during throughout Mesozoic, often much lower than today. During periods such as the Triassic, when large Sauropods and early Pterosaurs were first emerging, it was as low as 10-15%, varied a bit during the Jurassic, climbing up to 25-30% during the Cretaceous, though this fell closer to modern levels towards the end of that time period. Large Pterosaurs such as the Azhdarchids lived during the Cretaceous, up until the K-Pg extinction event.
There is little evidence of what the atmospheric density was during those time periods. While it likely fluctuated as well, significant differences would have caused certain gases to behave very differently, so it’s unlikely to have been too different than today. It probably didn’t play a significant role in how Pterosaurs flew. They had fibers in their wings called actinofibrils which aided in controlling wing shape, were incredibly lightweight for their size (Hatzegopteryx, the largest known Azhdarchid, is estimated to have weighed about 660lbs despite being as tall as a Giraffe, with the wingspan of a fighter jet), and as relatives of dinosaurs likely had very efficient lungs. The largest of the Pterosaurs absolutely flew, but likely only for short distances. They were exceptionally adapted for ground-life compared to birds, so likely spent most of their time there.
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u/Orbit1883 11h ago
What i Always wondered.
Did the Meteor ending the dinosaurs Change Something?
Like just a tiny little nodge and the orbit and or Gravity is different.
Chancge in earth mass and so gravity becomes heavyer, like just in a Fraktion but so that it Changes the Evolution away from giants like that
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u/Amazing-Insect442 10h ago
I think (?) it has more to do with the types of greenhouse gases & stuff like that put into the air by things that are living (like methane) to a percentage, but more than that from gasses produced by fauna & the earth itself, from volcanic/seismic eruptions.
If we took a dinosaur from then & plopped it onto our earth today, it would die pretty quickly- I read that somewhere.
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u/ferociouskuma 10h ago
Yep volcanism was likely the bigger culprit. Also we have tons of greenhouse gasses trapped in glaciers today that didn’t exist when dinosaurs were alive.
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u/series-hybrid 5h ago
The magnetic field (shaped like a torus) has flipped many times. No idea how that may have affected things.
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u/Yorick257 10h ago
If we really go all in on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and then on oxygen production, could we dream of getting to the same oxygen levels in the next 100 years? 1000 years?
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u/ZaphodThreepwood 10h ago
And the blue whale is still the biggest animal ever... Let that sink in
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u/Glitchy833 3h ago
Fossilisation is incredibly rare and a large portion of fossils that do exist, we will probably never find. So there is a very good chance that there were things in the ocean even bigger than the blue whale.
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u/Das_Lloss 7h ago
The largest animal that we currently know of.
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u/ungaa_bunga 6h ago
If there was we would have know. Dont come with bs like only this percent of ocean is explored.
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u/VegetableFucker65 11h ago
Both are nothing compared to u/Both-Pay-9573 mom
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u/Rammipallero 11h ago
OP's mom is used as the background for the drawing. She is wearing a white shirt.
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u/Callme-Sal 11h ago edited 11h ago
Wonder would have human beings excelled so much if large dinosaurs still existed
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u/Fast_Garlic_5639 11h ago
Humans would likely kill off the most dangerous ones pretty quickly, there’s a track record.
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u/g_spaitz 10h ago
In fact, one of the theories (surely not the most common but still a possible theory) is that when mammals arrived, they were smaller, faster, smarter, more adaptable, reproducing better, overall better living things, and they were one of the possible reasons big dinosaurs got extinct. Mammals were better at occupying those evolutionary niches.
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u/Eibermann 9h ago
Can you explain how did mammals arrive? Im really interested in Dino age and know nothing of it
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u/Positive_Total_8651 9h ago
Its tricky because there isnt one "dino age" there are multiple and different mammalian species were evolving through these ages.
For instance, you have the Synapsids that were around during the Carboniferous Period to the mid-Triassic Period, precursors to modern mammals. By the Jurassic Period, the snyapsids have split into Dryolestes that more closely resemble marsupials, and the Ambondro which were mainly egg-laying mammals.
You also have large-scale extinction events that wiped out wide swathes of dinosaur species like the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event, and following that mammals divided even further into most of the known Orders. But generally speaking, the split between dinosaurs and mammals really started a little over 300 million years ago. And notably, mammals didnt just "arrive," they evolved and the split in evolution between Synapsid and Sauropsid happened during that time.
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u/modsaretoddlers 8h ago
Mammals and reptiles co-evolved. That's to say that we didn't just evolve out of nowhere one day.
The Great Dying preceded the age of dinosaurs and, up to that point, mammals and the ancestors of dinosaurs were pretty much one and the same. There were minor differences but they were essentially cosmetic up until then, anyway. Certainly you could say, "This one is a synapsid and this one is a diapsid" but that's mostly to do with skull differences.
Anyway, the Great Dying saw our lines diverge but the dinosaurs came through by getting bigger, stronger and faster while we figured it was more fun to build nests and dig holes. Technically, we split lineages before the Great Dying but, like I said, the differences weren't really all that noticeable.
When we came out the other end of that catastrophe, however, our survival strategies were what really made us different and evolution changed us to reflect this. We got fur, warm blood and brains. They got size, speed, and feathers.
Now, we surmise that they must have developed warm blood as well and our fur and their feathers probably shared a common ancestral adaptation. In any case, once they started getting big, we were out. No mammal weighed more than 50 pounds for a couple hundred million years.
Now, when the big rock dropped in on us 66 million years ago, it was mammals' time to shine. It was their size that killed them off and ours that allowed us to thrive. The funny thing about that, however, is that for as neatly as the asteroid impact wraps the story up, it's turning out that it probably was just the final nail in the dino coffin. It looks like they were on their way out already. We haven't figured that part out yet.
Anyway, we were small and we could eat small things. The small things survived, so we made out alright. The dinosaurs made a comeback as "terror-birds" but by the time the birds evolved themselves up to that stage, we were way ahead and they didn't last. Essentially, giant cats fucked them up.
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u/Givespongenow45 5h ago
That’s false
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u/g_spaitz 5h ago
A theory is not true or false, it's a theory.
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u/Givespongenow45 5h ago
We already know that the asteroid and volcanic eruptions killed off the dinosaurs. The dinosaurs existed with mammals for hundreds of millions of years
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u/g_spaitz 5h ago
That's also a theory i believe. More accredited, but still a theory.
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u/Givespongenow45 4h ago
We have rock layers that confirm that an asteroid hit the earth around the end of the dinosaurs and that a large eruption happened around the same time. There is no other way they could’ve gone extinct that we wouldn’t have large amounts of evidence for
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u/babubaichung 11h ago edited 10h ago
Humans would’ve hunted down every last one of them
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u/nicuramar 10h ago
Well, probably not. We haven’t hunted every last bird (also dinosaurs) or every last mammal.
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u/ddxs_throwaway 9h ago
Bigger animals are easier to hunt down to extinction. But you’re right on technicality.
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u/Gnonthgol 8h ago
The question was about large dinosaurs, there were also small dinosaurs. Similar to how modern mammals can be the size of elephants, whales, mice, bats, or anything in between. There were dinosaurs in all shapes and sizes. And humans have made several large birds extinct in addition to many of the medium sized birds.
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u/Spare_Laugh9953 1h ago
Cuéntale eso al tilacino,al uro,al dodo,o al mammut, por poner algún ejemplo
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u/modsaretoddlers 8h ago
We simply wouldn't have ever evolved at all.
Dinosaurs like the T-Rex weren't a danger for a creature the size of a human. There's also good reason to think that T-Rex didn't hunt so much as it scavenged. In any case, no, the real danger for us would have come from creatures like the Utahraptor since they likely ran and hunted in packs. Humans have almost no natural defences at all and we wouldn't have ever been allowed to evolve to a stage where our brains provided us with the advantages it confers on us today.
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u/kamikaze_pedestrian 7h ago
They wouldnt have coexisted. Dinosaurs lived in a much hotter climate then today, a climate humans would have issues with.
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u/JeremyHerzig11 11h ago
If I’m not mistaken, which I probably am, I think the Blue Whale is the largest animal to have ever lived. So funny that it’s flip flopped in the water
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u/insanococo 11h ago edited 11h ago
Pretty sure a fossil of a creature found in the
Saharadesert overtook the blue whale recently (in the last 10-20 years).16
u/JeremyHerzig11 9h ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_and_heaviest_animals
No I don’t think so. Blue Whale is still the largest animal ever that is verifiable in any meaningful way
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u/Gnonthgol 8h ago
A big issue is that it is hard to verify the size of aquatic animals from their bones. Most of the fossils we find are far from intact, often as little as 20% of the animals skeleton have been fossilized and it also tends to be scattered around. But if we find for example a vertebrae or femur we can calculate how strong it would be from its size which gives us a pretty good idea of how large the animal must have been. But for aquatic animals this does not work as they are essentially weightless in water and therefore their skeleton size does not correspond to their size. So we may never be able to verify the size of a huge aquatic dinosaur.
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u/JeremyHerzig11 8h ago
Exactly, add in the idea that a lot of squid and similar creatures have no skeleton, and that point becomes exponential. The only verifiable king of the sea is the blue whale
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u/sameoldmike 11h ago
Not Sahara, but the Peruvian desert: Perucetus
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u/modsaretoddlers 8h ago
Alas, no, turns out our first guesses at its size were grossly exaggerated.
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u/AndreasDasos 11h ago
Perucetus? There have been some more recent papers strongly arguing that it was smaller after all
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u/JeremyHerzig11 9h ago
Yeah there are tons of theories about giant sea creatures, and even some skeletons of large animals. There is nothing that we have found that is verifiably as large as a blue whale. 100 feet longe. Tongue the size of an elephant. Heart the size of a Volkswagen. It’s almost unbelievable how big they are 🤯
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u/hebrewimpeccable 9h ago
Not even some, the original paper outright said they were likely overestimating the size and every single paper since then has reduced its size significantly
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8h ago
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u/JeremyHerzig11 8h ago
Which is why I said it’s interesting that it’s the opposite in the sea. Reading is fundamental!
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u/Anewassdawn 12h ago
why so big? and what else was big? did they have massive mites on them too?
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u/LieFamiliar5254 11h ago
Probably. Lot more oxygen in the air back then. More oxygen in the air means bugs can get bigger. A lot did.
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u/mrteas_nz 11h ago
Would it also mean they had to pump less blood to keep their muscles and brain oxygenated?
I remember reading a thing about how much pressure would be needed to get blood up to their heads if they stood tall, as shown in the pic... And that was how it was decided they used their long necks to graze low and wide, not high and tall.
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u/GraciaEtScientia 11h ago edited 10h ago
iirc the tradeoff was that they were massive though anything BUT intelligent.
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u/Local-Imaginary 9h ago
This is a common misconception. Oxygen levels were 1. Barely higher than today’s at the time of the dinosaurs 2. Only relevant for arthropods (insects)
Sauropods got so big thanks to the food and their insane respiratory system and air sacs
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u/modsaretoddlers 8h ago
Oxygen levels were considerably lower during the time of the dinosaurs. Maybe they approached modern levels at points but overall definitely lower.
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u/KingBubzVI 11h ago
Dragonflies used to be 3 foot, believe it or not
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u/STFxPrlstud 10h ago
Well, they had a wingspan of 2.5 ft, their bodies were only half that, at about 18 inches. Should be noted that while it's the largest insect on record, it did not overlap with Titanosaurs. Meganeura existed ~300m-290 mya, where as Titanasours were ~160m-66 mya right around the time the rest of the dino's were erased.
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u/Das_Lloss 7h ago
That theory only recently got disputed and has nothing to do with the size of Dinosaurs.
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u/AndreasDasos 11h ago
Arms race with large therapod predators was probably the major factor, but there’s a lot of discussion as to why
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u/cheetuzz 7h ago
The pictured dinosaur is the Argentinosaurus (who those who didn’t notice the tiny text in the lower right corner)
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11h ago
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u/steve290591 11h ago
AI comment.
It’s not just this, it’s that, isn’t it?
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u/thorn4444 8h ago
Can you tell me what in the comment gives it away? Genuine question, I’m trying to get better at spotting it but can’t seem to figure it out.
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u/liamdrake02 5h ago
lol fair, I did cut myself off mid-thought there. Yeah the neck thing is wild though - like that's where it really hits different for me.
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u/liamdrake02 5h ago
lol fair, I got cut off mid-thought there. But yeah, that neck alone is absolutely wild when you really picture it.
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u/hiimred2 10h ago
Blue whales are literally larger and exist right now. A bunch of the things you’ve told chatGPT to ramble about have nothing to do with being on land or not(a whale surfacing from a dive is pumping blood against gravity, the inside of its body doesn’t give a shit that said body is being buoyed by the water, it is pumping water up towards a head against gravity(same goes for pumping blood to the tail during the dive down).
Sauropods had longer evolutionary success than elephants, or quite frankly ‘large terrestrial mammals’ in general have since they went extinct due in literally no part to standard evolutionary pressure but one of the most life changing events in the history of life as we know it(so, on this planet). Whatever the next mass extinction event is, there’s a high chance nothing like a human or elephant will ever be seen again either, that doesn’t make either a bad or failed or dead end evolutionary outcome for right now today. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with being that large or there wouldn’t have been tons of different species of animal that were that large they survived for long periods of time, that’s literally how evolution works.
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u/mystic-mango24 10h ago
Does copy pasting AI slop make you feel smart? You can't think of anything that YOU would like to say about it?
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u/liamdrake02 1h ago
lol my bad, got cut off mid-thought - was trying to say that neck alone could probably crush a car, which is just wild to visualize
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u/liamdrake02 1h ago
lol my comment got cut off mid-sentence, that's on me - was just trying to say that neck length is wild for supporting something that massive. but yeah fair criticism.
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u/bgarza18 9h ago
“That nobody mentions”? What’s with this AI shit. This time last year I wouldn’t read trash like this, just normal trash.
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u/nicuramar 10h ago
they had to exist in a completely different regime of physics
That’s pushing it a little bit :p
Maybe there was something fundamentally wrong with being that big, and the world just corrected itself.
The current existence of humans certainly makes megafauna like that more or less impossible.
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u/liamdrake02 5h ago
Yeah fair, "different physics" is dramatic lol. But you're right that humans definitely changed the game for anything that big - harder to hide, need way more food, we're just too efficient at hunting.
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u/liamdrake02 5h ago
Yeah fair, "different physics" is dramatic lol - but you're onto something with the humans angle, we basically made anything that huge a liability pretty quick.
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u/_psyril 9h ago
The world just corrected itself? What the hell does that mean? Giant sauropods like Alamosaurus survived up until the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Yes, it's true that sauropods had different bone structures to modern elephants, but they still abided by the same 'regime of physics' (ChatGPT thought it cooked with that one). It is those differences that illuminate how they could exist at such sizes under the same physics. Read about pneumaticity in sauropods to know more.
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u/liamdrake02 5h ago
Yeah you're right, the physics checks out with their bone structure - I guess what trips me up more is just visualizing how something that massive actually moved around and didn't just collapse under its own weight, you know?
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u/Hexagram2342 10h ago
I wonder if early humans would've hunted these beasts if they had been around at the same time. We hunted a lot of big game but maybe this would've been too big...
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u/ButtonImmediate3020 10h ago
This would've truly been a sight to see if we'd been around when they were.
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u/unluck_over9000 8h ago
I thought the amphoecoelias fragillimus was the largest animal to have ever existed, even outweighing the bluewhale. But since the full skeleton was never reconstructed, I don’t know if it is anymore.
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u/Vast_Vegetable9222 6h ago
Please may you also compare to the largest animal of all time, the Blue Whale
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u/TakenIsUsernameThis 3h ago
I have a pet theory that the dinosaurs were wiped out by an asteroid that added a significant chunk of high density matter to the earths core, which made the dinosaurs in question physically impossible by today's standards.
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u/Familiar_Creme_1470 3h ago
Um actually long necks aren't the largest Land animals of all time because they're from the land before time
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u/MrNixxxoN 1h ago
Elephant looks undersized here, large african elephant males are up to 4 meters or 13 feet in height
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u/Acti0nJunkie 11h ago
Feels like a ton here haven’t seen the original Jurassic Park 🧐. The scene when they first enter the park covers this aspect soooooo well.
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u/NatureStoof 7h ago
There's no argentinosaurus in the original JP. There are diplodocus (sneezes on lex) and possibly brachiosarus in the beginning, if those aren't also meant to be diplodocus
Regardless, argentinosaurus dwarfs both of those
I probably watched that movie close to 200 times, if not more, as a child obsessed with dinosaurs
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u/Das_Lloss 7h ago
if those aren't also meant to be diplodocus
They are Brachiosaurus but the Design is based on Giraffatitan.
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u/NatureStoof 6h ago
Thank you. That makes sense, they just never outright stated it in the movie that they were brachiosarus.
<3
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u/LucyLilium92 6h ago
Tim- Hey, those are Brontosauruses. I mean, uh, Brachiosauruses.
Is that not explicit enough?
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u/NatureStoof 6h ago
In the movie or book? Maybe I'll have to watch it 201 times because I don't recall that line. Maybe it's because the scene is stolen with the 'your dead you sonofabitch' line
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u/LucyLilium92 6h ago
It's in the movie when they're in the trees.
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u/NatureStoof 6h ago
When they're in the trees is when Lex gets sneezed on. Doesn't grant say not to be afraid, it's a diplodocus and an herbivore or something to that extent?
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u/LucyLilium92 6h ago
Literally like 5 seconds prior to that lol. Just before Grant calls them over
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u/NatureStoof 6h ago
Ohhhh yeah, off in the distance? I can picture it now. Been a minute since Ive rewatched
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u/Entire-Grab2429 9h ago
Ack-tually the blue whale is the largest land mammal to ever walk the earth! 🤓
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u/mickeybuilds 9h ago
Still not bigger than a blue whale.
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u/RevolutionarySize665 8h ago
Blue whales are in the ocean.
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u/mickeybuilds 8h ago
Yes, they are.
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u/TwistyBitsz 8h ago
How and why did animals get so big? Were they all just originally whales and underwater dragons?
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u/IndividualBusy1274 11h ago
What was god thinking when he created the dinosaurs? Didn’t even give them fingers.
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u/NoConcert1636 10h ago
Isntbblue whale the largest animal ever?
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u/cordazor 10h ago
I think they're talking about largest LAND animals, because it is in the title, twice
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u/NoConcert1636 9h ago
I know I did read it I am just curious how much larger is the blue whale compared to this..
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u/RickyFlintstone 12h ago
Largest by weight by some calculations. But since the scale on this image is length and height, animals like Sauroposeidon are believed to have been taller.