Re: Giraffatitin brancai Vs Brachiosaurus brancai Vs Brachiosaurus altithorax

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

In a message dated 3/17/02 7:43:04 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
MariusRomanus@aol.com writes:

<< Also...... I'm guessing that _Giraffatitan brancai_ is the guy mounted in 
 Berlin since it used to be _B. brancai_..... Is this guy also mounted 
outside 
 the Chicago Field Museum????  And, is that _Brachiosaurus altithorax_ 
mounted 
 at O'Hare Airport, or is that just _Giraffatitin brancai_ again??? Which is 
 the largest mount? >>

As I recall, the Chicago mount is a chimera-cast: they used what there was of 
Riggs's specimen and filled it in with casts from the Humboldt Museum 
Giraffatitan mount. All "Brachiosaurus" mounts are chimeras, for that matter, 
since the Brachiosaurus material from Tendaguru was disassociated bones from 
several individuals, and when the Humboldt skeleton was mounted the bones 
were matched for size from the set they had available.

We have dorsal vertebrae from both the American Brachiosaurus and the African 
Giraffatitan, and they are different. You might want to take a look at the 
drawings of the dorsal sequences in Greg's paper on Giraffatitan.