Re: Largest Camarasaurus specimens

[Zach Armstrong <zach.armstrong64@yahoo.com>]

Giraffatitan also had a lot more neck (which is a lot less dense and not very 
voluminous) and a lot less tail. I got a mass of 31 tonnes for Giraffatitan 
doing a GDI off of Greg Paul's 1988 paper reconstruction (this used a 300 
kg/m^3 density for the neck, 800 kg/m^3 for the torso and tail, and 1000 kg/m^3 
for the limbs, with an overall average density of ~761 kg/m^3=0.761 kg/L). The 
largest specimens may have been a bit bigger, the "HMN XV2" 1340 mm fibula 
listed by Paul might have massed ~44 tonnes if scaled isometrically to "HMN 
SII".


Greg's mass estimate is probably too high for C. supremus (23 tonnes for a 18 
meter specimen), but a 23 meter specimen scaled off of that would give a mass 
of roughly 48 tonnes.



----- Original Message -----
> From: Heinrich Mallison <heinrich.mallison@googlemail.com>
> To: DML <dinosaur@usc.edu>
> Cc: 
> Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2012 4:42 PM
> Subject: Re: Largest Camarasaurus specimens
> 
> 47t is high for Giraffatitan - I got 48 t using a (probably too high)
> density of 0.8 kg/L. For Camarasaurus, being a bit more sturdy, I can
> believe 80% of the weight of G. at a stretch. Thus, using a more
> realistic density of 0.6 or 0.8 kg/L, you'd end up with at most 34 t.
> ___________________________________
> Dr. Heinrich Mallison
> Abteilung Forschung
> Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz-Institut
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> 
> On Tue, May 22, 2012 at 11:38 PM, David Marjanovic
> <david.marjanovic@gmx.at> wrote:
>>>   Does any one have any references for the largest Camarasaurus
>>>   specimens (especially C. supremus). I've heard size estimates of 
> 23
>>>   meters long and 47 tonnes
>> 
>> 
>>  I have no idea, but I can say with a fair amount of certainty that 47 
> tonnes
>>  for a 23-m-long animal th
dicrous. 10 t, OK; 20 t, 
> OK;
>>  30 t, if it's proportioned like a sumo wrestler, why not. 47 t? No way.
>> 
>>  I guess this figure was derived by measuring the water displacement of a
>>  commercial model that violated Holtz's First Rule of Skeletal 
> Restoration*,
>>  using the rounded density of an unspecified lizard.
>> 
>>  * "If the skeleton doesn't fit inside the model, the model is 
> wrong."
>