Three Cute New Titanosaurs
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Hello and welcome to I Know Dino. Keep up with the latest dinosaur discoveries and science with us. I'm Garrett. And I'm Sabrina. And today in our 540th episode, we've got a bunch of news. We've got three new titanosaurs, although only one of them's big. Hmm, two of them aren't living up to their name. Not so titanic after all. We also have dinosaur of the day, Eodromeus, the dawn runner.

Oh, we haven't done that as a dinosaur of the day. What do you know? Yes. That's why I like getting requests from our patrons. Sometimes we miss some that we definitely should have covered by now. I also have a fun fact, which is about World Metrology Day, one of my favorite days of the year. But I don't want to spoil it. So I will explain the fun way to measure dinosaurs and other associated measurements later. All right.

It'll be good. Feel free to get your hopes up. But we also have a quick note, sort of a accounting note.

news item a quick update yeah that sounds more exciting it's if you use our patreon through ios yeah so you may remember a little while back we mentioned that patreon was going to start charging a 30 fee to any payments that were on ios as a result of app store requirements and

but they are no longer going to be requiring that fee. This is a result of the Epic Games versus Apple court case that started way back in 2020. This is when Epic Games sued Apple for charging a 30% fee on purchases in Fortnite. And because Apple didn't allow Epic to use their own payment processing to avoid the fee,

Eventually, Epic Games quote unquote won, but their solution was that anyone could process payments on their own to avoid the 30% fee. However, they had to pay Apple a 27% revenue share, as they called it. And since credit card fees are often 3% or even higher for small dollar amounts, this wasn't really a win.

Additionally, Apple quote unquote heavily restricted how third party payments could be displayed. So not surprisingly, Epic complained to the judge. And just a few weeks ago, the judge found that Apple had willfully violated her injunction. All of that is to say the results for Patreon from their post are that Apple,

Quote, Patreon's checkout option, which avoids Apple's 30% fee, is now the default checkout option for US-based fans making membership purchases in the iOS app. Your US fans will now see the price you set without Apple's fee automatically added in, just like they would on the web or on Android, which is great.

I think the same applies to the UK because I believe they passed a law last year limiting Apple's fees through iOS. So I'm not sure about other countries in the EU. I'm not sure about Australia. But for anybody in those areas, if you just sign up for Patreon using a web browser, whether you're on an Apple device or not, or if you're on a computer, then you won't have to pay that fee. Yeah. If you're on an Apple device and you're using...

the Patreon app on Apple, then just make sure you have the latest version. Yeah. And I think you might have to either cancel and resubscribe or change your payment options in the app in order to not pay that fee anymore. Oh, really? Because I'm guessing that it will recur through the iOS payment processing because our Triceratops tier is supposed to be

nine 99 us. Yes. And some places put a little sales tax on it, but it should be near $10 us. If instead you're seeing like $13 or $14, it's probably because you signed up through iOS and they're adding a big fee on top of it. So then you can switch over using the web browser to paying just directly through Patreon, and then you'll avoid that fee.

And speaking of Patreon, we do have some shout outs to give. Yes, we have four new patrons. They are Matthew, Chandler, Big Cat, and Romy. Thank you all very much for joining. Yeah. And then rounding out our shout outs, we've got HeavyDevyC, Fergus, Richard, Hannah Monslama, Ali Exists, and Chris.

Amazing. Thank you so much for being a dino at all, being part of our community. We hope you're enjoying and taking advantage of all those perks, like all the bonus content that we're starting to churn out regularly. Yes.

I also posted on Patreon recently, although this isn't going to come out for a little bit, that I'm going to go to the Jurassic World Rebirth Midnight Showing in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I posted the theater and when I'm going on our Patreon. So if you want to join me, go there, get a ticket.

And I'll see you at the theater at midnight on a Tuesday. Yep. So as long as you don't need a lot of sleep or you don't have anything going on on Wednesday morning. Or if you're just that dedicated. Yeah, which is what I'm doing because I think our kids are going to wake me up at like 6 or 7 a.m., but I want to see it. And Sabrina volunteered to watch the kids. Yep. Or volunteered to sleep. I'm not sure which. Both.

All right, let's get into the actual dinosaur content. Okay. So, like I said, there's some titanosaurs to talk about, starting with two new titanosaur dinosaurs from Hot Seg Island. That's a good one, with Hot Segopteryx, or Hot Segopteryx, the flying murder giraffe. Yeah, that's not a dinosaur.

Yeah, I know. But it may have terrorized some of the smaller dinosaurs. That's true. Well, with these titanosaurs, we've got Uriash Kadichi and Petrus Titan Hungaricus. Doing my best with the pronunciation here. We'll see. Yeah, Petrus Titan, probably. Like the place, Petrus. I was mostly thinking of Uriash. So Hadzug Island...

was a hotbed of dinosaurs, plus that murdered giraffe. It was a subtropical climate in the Cretaceous in what's now Romania. It turns out there were a lot of titanosaurs there, and those are the last surviving group of sauropods.

Now, when we think of titanosaurs, usually I'm thinking of some of the largest animals ever. Like some of them weighed over 60 metric tons. Like Patagotitan at the American Museum of Natural History? Yes. Oh, yeah. Because that one's what, 122 feet long? The skeleton? Roughly. Roughly. It's funny that you know the exact number of feet. It's pretty impressive. But some titanosaurs were actually fairly small.

And titanosaurs, they lived all over the world, but we don't know much about their history, their evolutionary relationships. So with these two newly named titanosaurs, now we know of at least four titanosaurs on Hot Seg Island.

And there were probably even more types of titanosaurs based on the large number of fossils that have been found there. Maybe it was a titanosaur island. That'd be fun. That sounds like the name of a movie you'd really want to watch. Yeah. Titanosaur Island. Not just me. That's true. I would watch it too. So the four known titanosaurs of Hadzik Island are Magyarosaurus, Pellutotitan, Petrus Titan, and Uriash.

I think I said it wrong before. So Uriash and Petrus Titan. Those are the two titanosaurs. So there's four total. So this doubles the number of known titanosaurs from Hot Seg Island. Sure does. Now, three of these titanosaurs are small and follow that island rule where animals seem to get smaller on islands. Which

which is what we usually think of when we're talking about Hot Seg Island. Island dwarfism, which is why it's crazy that there's one of the largest flying animals ever to live that was there because it may have eaten some of the dinosaurs. And it's breaking the island rule. Yeah. So Magyarosaurus is the smallest known adult sauropod. It's considered to be a dwarf sauropod. It's estimated to be about three meters or almost 10 feet long. Oh.

Weigh about one ton, yeah. Oh, it's like a horse. I was just thinking that you could ride it. And then Palutotitan and Petrus Titan are also on the small side. Palutotitan is estimated to be three and a half to four meters long or 11 and a half to over 13 feet. Petrus Titan is similar in size to Magyarosaurus, but maybe a bit larger of like about 3.2 meters long or 10 and a half feet.

Uriash, though, shows that there is no island rule here. Hmm. It's the largest titanosaur from the Hot Seck Basin. It's estimated to weigh between 5 and 8 metric tons and be up to 12 meters long or 39 feet. Hmm.

It's pretty big. It's quite a bit bigger than its fellow titanosaurs. Yeah. It's also one of the largest late Cretacean European titanosaurs, other than Abetosaurus, which is estimated to be 17 and a half meters long and weigh 14 tons. Yeah, it's not too far off. It's not. Although being the largest of a late Cretaceous European titanosaur is kind of like being, you know...

I mean, you're not competing with the South American titanosaurs. Yeah, or African or even Asian. Sort of the smallest ones in general because Europe at the time was basically a series of islands. It could be island dwarfism just on all of them. Oh, I see. It's still quite a bit bigger though than its fellow titanosaurs. Yes. Yeah. It's not that they were all just super tiny. Yeah. Yeah.

Like the tiniest one, you could think, oh, that might make a good pet. But this one would be way too big. I think a one-ton animal is a challenging pet too. Well, yeah. If you live on a farm, you can make it work. So how did all these titanosaurs get named? Well, the fossils were found in the area.

They've been fossils found since the 1890s. The first sauropod fossils on record were found in 1896. Wow. Yeah, and a lot of titanosaur fossils have been found over the years. But there's a lot of confusion and disagreement because so many of them are isolated and fragmentary. Oh, yeah. If you're finding half a vertebra a year for a century, that doesn't really tell you a whole lot. Yeah. I don't know if that was the rate that they found it. I know. But yeah, just little fragments here and there aren't the most useful. Yeah.

And for many of the bones, too, there's not much information about where exactly in the basin they were found, which makes it hard to know where they found together. When did they live exactly? Details like that. Yep. That's why it's important to take notes. Yes. There's a lot of uncertainty around Magyarosaurus fossils.

Like maybe there's a possible chimera there because it's just unclear of the association of the fossils. Like they just put together bones from a bunch of different animals. Yes. So Magyarosaurus dacus is considered to be a valid dinosaur, but it's unclear about other species. There's one with a question mark, Magyarosaurus hungaricus, and then you've got Magyarosaurus transylvanicus dacus.

Plus, Pellutotitan naledzensis was named in 2010. That one used to be considered Magyarosaurus. So we've got some splitting happening. And that shows that there could have been some other mistakes when studying Magyarosaurus bones. And previous research has hinted that there's at least one other large dinosaur in the area. Which could be that, what'd you call it? Uriash? Uriash? Uriash? No, this is an addition. Oh, okay. Yeah.

So the team for this study analyzed hundreds of specimens that were considered to belong to Magyarosaurus, and they re-described Magyarosaurus dacus as having five unique features, like details in the tail and ridges and depressions in the bones. They also re-described Pellutotitan, and they found unique features in the hips. As for Uriyash...

Kadikai, that genus name Uriash quote refers to the gigantic humanoid fairy tale characters in Romanian folklore end quote, as well as to something colossal that alludes to it just being so large. Gigantic humanoid fairy tale creatures. I'd like that as a description of like a giant. Yes, characters. Yeah. And then the species name is in honor of Autokar Kadik.

who was a geologist and paleontologist and discovered several fossil sites in the Hotzik Basin. The holotype of Uriash includes tail bones, vertebrae, part of the right arm, a part of the legs, and foot. And it's the details in the tail bones, the arm, and the leg that make it unique. Like I said, it's estimated to weigh between 5 to 8 metric tons, and then be between almost 9 to almost 12 meters long, about 29 to almost 39 feet.

Now we've got the second new titanosaur, Petrus titan hungaricus. That genus name means stone titan and refers to where it was found, the rocky outcrops. The species name stayed the same because Petrus titan hungaricus used to be Magyarosaurus hungaricus. It was named based on a left fibula, the lower leg bone, and a tibia, the shin bone, from two individuals.

They also referred tail bones, parts of the right arm and hand, and parts of the hips to Petrus Titan. And it was named based on details in the leg bones. That's what made it unique.

It's really interesting. Although all four of these titanosaurs lived together in the Hot Seg Basin, none of them are closely related. So it seems that their lineages migrated there in four separate times or four separate events. That is interesting. Yeah, they found that they were related to Gondwanan species from the south.

So it helps show that these late Cretaceous European titanosaurs came from, quote, Gondwanan lineages that invaded the former area during the Baramian Albion. Invading. Yeah, invading. They were just moving around, trying things out. Maybe they were rafting. Maybe. Seems like it'd be hard for a sauropod to raft. These are little sauropods. Still heavy. Or it could be on a baby. Hmm.

Well, again, Magyarosaurus is a dwarf sauropod. Pellutotitan and Petrus Titan were small, and Uriash was much bigger. So it could be that large dinosaurs didn't compete with the smaller ones, so this titanosaur Uriash stayed large. Or the titanosaurs that were smaller came from a lineage of small-bodied titanosaurs, and the dwarfing occurred earlier in the family tree, and they're descendants of smaller dinosaurs.

The authors didn't find any evidence of larger species replacing smaller titanosaurs. Alas, the team also described individuals and groups of bones that were either not similar enough to be referred to one of the other titanosaurs or not unique enough to have a new name. But it helps show that there's a lot more diversity among titanosaurs in the Hot Seag Basin. Twice the diversity than what we previously knew. Seems like future studies might show us even more. Mm-hmm.

So we'll see. Titanosaur Island, here we come. Titanosaur Island. So they're going to be the nickname like there's Dinosaur Island and all that. This is going to be Titanosaur Island. That'd be great. I feel like it's always going to be Hot Tag because Hot Tagopteryx is just like the most interesting animal there. I guess. Even though it's not a dinosaur, it's just so cool. Megiarosaurus is really cool though. Yeah. Titanosaur Island. Oof.

So that brings me to our third titanosaur, which is the new one, Chattatitan calvuli. Oh, I forgot to mention before I get into that, these two titanosaurs from Hot Seg Island, this was published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology by Veronica Diaz-Diaz and others. So back to Chattatitan. This was published in Revista del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales by Federico Agnolin and others.

Now, interestingly, this titanosaur, Chattatitan, is not as big as the new big titanosaur from the hot seg. So we've got, like I said, just out of three new titanosaurs, only one of them's big. And not even that big. Yeah, not even that big. Chattatitan's estimated to be about 23 feet or 7 meters long. That is small. I mean, every one that you've named is shorter than the longest T-Rex or the longest Hathrasaur. Yeah.

Yes, and it's especially considered small for a titanosaur. Yeah, I mean, 23 feet long is barely longer than like a Utah raptor. Hmm, when you put it like that. It would have been a lot bulkier, obviously, but just in length. Well, Chattatitan had a slender body and long vertebrate and delicate limb bones. It had gracile, relatively straight arm and leg bones, the humerus and femur, and relatively long, narrow tail bones.

The genus name means Titan of the Salt or Salt Titan. That's the Mapudungan word. Chadai means salt. Titan of the Salt. Yes. It's kind of fun. It was found near a large salt flat. And then the species name...

Calvo I is in honor of paleontologist Jorge Calvo, who named the group Rinconsauria. That's the clade of titanosaurs that lived in the late Cretaceous in what is now Argentina. And they tend to be small for titanosaurs. And Chattatitan is a Rinconsaurian. Makes sense. Mm-hmm.

And it was found in northern Patagonia. So that's also interesting because Patagonia usually has the big dinosaurs, the big sauropods. It does. Although in the Cretaceous, there were islands and weird things happening there too because sea levels were so high. Yeah. Well, several fragmentary skeletons were found. That includes back and tail bones, part of the hips, part of the shoulder, parts of the arms and legs.

And it lived in the late Cretaceous in what is now Rio Negro province in Argentina. It lived in the Anacleto formation, along with snails, fish, turtles, and crocodilians in an arid environment with a pond.

And interestingly, also more than 90% of the fossils found in this area belong to freshwater turtles. What's going on there? The sauropod wasn't big enough to smash all of them. That's what was going on. The turtles taking over. Something's going on with those turtles. I don't trust them. They're eating all the other animals' eggs. Yeah. Something. Something fishy. Something turtley. Yeah.

And we will take a break from sauropods and get into our dinosaur of the day, Eodromeus, in just a moment. But first, we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors.

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I also really like the custom black chunky tiles with the different Mesozoic creatures on them. They're just so cool looking. Yeah, they have suits like on cards. It's up there. Egg, bone, claw and footprint. Suits like Mahjong, I guess, because they're like Mahjong tiles. I didn't realize there were suits in Mahjong.

There's also custom dice and tokens for the game. The game is for ages 10 and up, and each game takes 30 to 60 minutes, which really is a sweet spot for us. Yeah, it looks like an amazing game. I cannot wait to try it. We're going to try it very soon.

If you want to get your copy, you can get it at Kickstarter by searching for Soros, spelled S-A-U-R-O-S. Or you can go to our show notes and use our referral link. And if you do that, then they'll know that we're the ones that told you about it. So we would appreciate that. Yes. And make sure to order yours now because the campaign ends soon.

This episode is brought to you by our patrons, especially our lovely patrons at the Tyrannosaurus tier and above. Yes, that's kind of our book tier, which is why we really wanted to celebrate our I Know Dino book coming out by offering a signed copy to everyone at the Tyrannosaurus tier and above if you join by the end of this month, May of 2025. Yeah, the book...

I think turned out fantastic. It has tons of dinosaur science history in it. It starts with Megalosaurus, of course, because we did them in order of their naming date. And it ends with Stegouros, the really cool new ankylosaur that everybody loves. Everybody, yes. But just before that is a sauropod.

Because everyone also loves sauropods, right? Behatosaurus. I think they are two popular groups. Sauropod's probably more popular, honestly. And it's the cool new version with sails like a margasaurus rather than the rebar spikes like the original idea just a couple years ago. Yeah. So yeah, if you would like a signed copy of our new I Know Dino book. I didn't do the exclamation mark quite right. I Know Dino. I Know Dino.

then head over to patreon.com slash inodino and sign up for the Tyrannosaurus tier or above. And if you're already a Tyrannosaurus patron, just make sure that you have your address in there and that it's up to date. By the end of this month, May of 2025. And now on to our Dinosaur of the Day, Eodromeus, which was a request from Paul V via our Patreon and Discord. So thanks.

We're moving away from sauropods into theropods because Eodromeus was a theropod that lived in the late Triassic, about 230 million years ago, in what is now Argentina. It was found in the Isqui-Gualasto Formation.

Being an early dinosaur, it looks like other early dinosaurs. You know, it walked on two legs. It had the long tail. It's been described as pet-sized. Not just by you, by other people. By other people, yeah. Because it's been estimated to be almost four feet or 1.2 meters long and weigh about 10 to 15 pounds or 4.5 to 6.8 kilograms. Yeah. Much lighter than that Magyarosaurus Torbjörn. Yeah, you could fit that in even an apartment. Yeah.

You could lift it 10 to 15 pounds. That's nothing. Although there is another estimate that it weighed 16 whole pounds, 7.1 kilograms. I mean, you could also lift a caiman, but I don't know if it's recommended. Oh, true. Just being probably a meat-eating theropod with sharp teeth and all that, you might not want to get up and cuddle with it. Well...

It did have long fingers and sharp claws and five fingers in each hand. Its fourth and fifth fingers are smaller than the first three fingers. Starting to get down to that theropod three finger look. Yeah. It had a stiff tail to help it balance. It had long legs and was lightly built, so it might have been a fast runner. It's estimated to run about 20 miles per hour, 32 kilometers per hour. That's fast. Yeah.

It had a low rectangular skull that was about 12 centimeters or almost five inches long. And its skull had features like other theropods, like deep depressions on the side of the brain case, as well as having an additional hole in it, a fenestra. It had a slender lower jaw and knife-shaped teeth.

And it also had a row of small teeth on the pterygoid bone of the palate that's in the back of the mouth. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. Yeah. You don't see a lot of teeth on the roof of the mouth. Yeah. In dinosaurs. Yeah. At first, it was thought to be a new species of Eoraptor. You know what? I was thinking of Eoraptor when I said I was surprised we haven't done Eodromeus. There you go.

I think we have talked about Eoraptor. I think we have too. Now, Eoraptor also has that palatal teeth, but in general, like you were saying, that's just rare to see in dinosaurs. Eodromea has had longer neck bones than Eoraptor.

And the discovery of Eodromeus led to Eoraptor being reclassified as a basal sauropodomorph instead of a theropod, which was originally thought to be a theropod. That's why it's called raptor. You don't usually name sauropodomorphs raptor. Yeah. Well, it's hard in the Triassic being able to differentiate these dinosaurs because they all look so similar. They do. Yeah. They're all bipedal and quick and carnivorous, maybe omnivorous. Yeah. Yeah.

Unless, I guess, psilosaurids, maybe some of them were herbivorous, but other than them. So Eoraptor had leaf-shaped teeth, which is another, I guess, point for it being a sauropodomorph. Mm-hmm. There's been some debate over how to classify Eodromeus. Most seem to consider it a basal theropod, and Eodromeus had features in the arms, legs, and hips that show that it's likely a theropod. Eoraptor's still being debated.

The fossils for Eodromeus were found in 1996 by Ricardo Martinez and Jim Murphy. Six specimens were found, and the holotype includes a crushed but nearly complete skeleton. And then it was named in 2011 by Ricardo Martinez and others. The type species is Eodromeus murphi. That genus name means dawn runner, and then the species name is in honor of Jim Murphy. And it lived in a humid climate. That formation...

Iski-Gualasto, the name of the formation where it was found, comes from the extinct Kakan language, and that means place where the moon alights. Oh, that's a beautiful name. It is. It's very pretty. Some other dinosaurs that lived around the same time and place include the basal sauropodomorphs, Eoraptor, of course, Chromogosaurus, and Herrerasaurus, such as Herrerasaurus and Sanwansaurus. Other animals that lived around the same time and place include Aedasaurs,

Yes, could and have been. Yes. And our fun fact of the day is in honor of World Metrology Day. I won't say that it is World Metrology Day because by the time this airs, that will have been over a week ago. But it is World Metrology Day.

But to us living in the past, basically World Metrology Day. That's when we recorded. Yep. I think we actually missed World Metrology Day last year, which is just an utter shame. So sad. But I will make up for it this year with lots of metrology talk because I don't want to miss out on some fun dinosaur measurements like I did last year.

Well then. I know I don't have to explain it, but World Metrology Day is the annual celebration of the anniversary of the meter convention of 1875. I forgot that. I know. So I guess you did have to explain it. I think I probably had to for most people. That's when 17 countries, including the U.S., agreed on using a meter for length and a kilogram for weight slash mass.

And one of these centuries, the U.S. will actually start doing that, hopefully. Can I just cut in real quick? How did you get so into World Metrology Day? I've always enjoyed weird units of measurement. And I think while researching weird units of measurement, I stumbled onto World Metrology Day at some point. Yeah. All right. I've got some weird ones in the mix. Again, new weird measurements. There's an unending number of them.

But in honor of World Metrology Day, I'll be using meters and kilograms only for the dinosaur measurements. All right. With some exceptions, but mostly.

I'll be on the lookout because you told me that when you were researching, there was one thing that made you laugh out loud. Yes. So I'm wondering what that is. That's why I said four dinosaur measurements. I'm still going to talk about some other units, but I'm not going to say like it's 30 feet, you know, slash whatever meters. Because a meter is 3.28 feet. So you can do the math yourself if you're interested. And a kilogram is about 2.2 pounds as long as you're on Earth, because technically a kilogram is mass and not weight.

We usually just cheat and use the term tons when we're talking about weight. And that's because the various tons are pretty close. A metric ton is a thousand kilograms, which is 2,205 pounds rounding to the nearest pound. A short ton is

which is what in the US we just call a ton, is 2,000 pounds. So it's about 10% less than a metric ton. And a long ton, also known as an imperial ton or a British ton, is 2,240 pounds. 40 pounds more than a metric ton. Interesting. Or 35 pounds. Yeah, it's very interesting.

They're all within about 10%, though. So usually we just say a ton and that's within the error bounds for most dinosaurs. So it works out fine. When you get to the really heavy sauropods, sometimes we differentiate. True. Because if you're saying like 55 tons, it would be 60 if you switched over. Yeah.

But I always thought the long ton was an attempt to make the ton closer to a metric ton because they're only off by 40 pounds. But it is so much funnier than that. This is the thing that I actually laughed when I read. Okay. Because the reason it's called a long ton is because it's 20 long hundredweight tons.

What? Yeah. So you might be wondering what a long hundred weight is. I am. It is eight stone.

Okay, I'm familiar with stone, but not enough to know off the top of my head. Yeah, so a stone is 14 pounds. So if you do the math, you have 14 pounds per stone times 8 stone per long 100 weight times 20 long 100 weight per long ton, and you end up with 2,240 pounds or 1,016 kilograms.

Okay. That's what a long ton is. Well, that's a long explanation. Is that why? No. I think it's a fun explanation. I like long hundredweight. It's very interesting. I've never heard anybody use a long hundredweight as a measurement, but like you said, stone is a common measurement. I think...

Only for human body weights in the UK and Ireland. I don't think it's used anywhere else. That's where I've heard it. Yeah. So, for example, someone in the UK might say, I weigh 11 stone 6 instead of saying 73 kilograms or 160 pounds. That's just like...

the shorthand. For the record, there are other hundred weights. They're always one twentieth of whatever ton you're talking about. So if you have a long hundred weight, it's a twentieth of a long ton. If you have a short hundred weight, it's a twentieth of a short ton. And there's also a metric hundred weight, which is a twentieth of a metric ton, also known as just 50 kilograms. That's a lot of things to keep track of. Yes.

But nobody really uses any of these, I don't think. 100 weights, really weird measurement.

But switching over to dinosaurs, now that I've explained the ton side of things. All right, get to the good stuff. Yeah. I'm going to do some size comparisons of different dinosaur groups because I think it can be really easy to lose track of the different dinosaur sizes. I've noticed that on the podcast where we're talking about a dinosaur and we'll say it's this long and weighed this much, but it's hard to give the context every time for how that fits in within the family. We'll say medium-sized or large-sized, but it's...

Hard to tell the total range. So starting out on the small end, I think it makes sense to start with Microraptor, which weighs about two kilograms on Earth, again, because it's mass. But Megaraptor at the other end of the scale weighs about two tons. That's a lot bigger. Yes, which means Megaraptor is right about a thousand times the size of Microraptor. It's fitting. Micro, mega. Yes. Yes.

Technically, with the prefixes mega and micro, it should be one trillion times the size. Ooh. But I still think the names are apt. Mm-hmm. A thousand times is a lot within a group of animals. Mm-hmm. Utahraptor, for the record, weighs about half a ton, which is a quarter of what Megaraptor weighs. Hmm. Although Megaraptor isn't actually a Dromaeosaurid, so it's not really a raptor by most people's meaning when they say raptors. It's a faux raptor. Yeah. Because they...

There was that mix up with where the claw went. Yeah, they found a huge claw and they figured, oh, it must be a huge toe claw from some massive raptor. We'll call it mega raptor. And then they discovered it was a hand claw and has nothing to do with dromaeus sorts. Side fun fact. Yep. Utah raptor.

being at 500 kilograms is very large for a dromaeosaurid or a raptor. Velociraptor by comparison only weighed about 15 kilograms or just 3% of the size by weight of Utahraptor.

Very, very different sized animals. One smaller than a dog, the other like the size of a horse. Wow. On the small side, Ichi, the weird bat-like dinosaur, weighed less than half a kilogram or a quarter of Microraptor. Ooh. Significantly smaller still. I know that Microraptor is not the smallest, despite its name, non-avian dinosaur, but

But I'm always still surprised when I hear the sizes of the smaller dinosaurs. Yeah, really small. And speaking of small dinosaurs, one that almost everyone knows is Archaeopteryx. That one probably weighed a little bit under a kilogram. So of the three, Microraptor is actually the largest, followed closely by Archaeopteryx, and last being E, which was quite a bit smaller. It's the most mega of the micros. Yeah. Yeah.

Although there are some really famous Archaeopteryx specimens that are roughly the size of E. So I'm using kind of the bigger end of the scale for the Archaeopteryx size. So Microraptor, not that micro, depending on what you're talking about. If you're talking about raptors, it's tiny. If you're talking about small flying dinosaurs, not as much. I also want to compare a few of my favorite ankylosaurs because of course I do. Yeah.

On the small side, there's the serrated axe-tailed Stegouros. In the medium category, there's the beautiful clubless Borealopelta. And on the needs-no-introduction amazing side, there's Ankylosaurus.

All three of these dinosaurs, I feel like you just find an excuse to bring them up all the time. All fantastic animals and fantastic finds, paleontologically speaking. So Stego Uros was about 1.6 meters long and weighed about 80 kilograms.

Pretty small. Borealopelta was a lot longer at five and a half meters and weighed about 1300 kilograms. But Ankylosaurus, the undisputed champion, was eight meters long and weight estimates put it at a staggering 8000 kilograms. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. Yeah. It's like T-Rex weight right there.

It's always interesting to me because the lengths don't seem that different. 1.6 versus 5.5 versus 8 meters. But the weights go up almost exponentially. Specifically, the weights basically double for each meter that they grow. In these three, at least, it's almost exactly doubling for each meter in length.

It kind of makes sense because if you've ever done a body mass index calculation, it's your weight divided by the square of your height for the same kind of reason. Since we're three-dimensional, we tend to get wider as we get taller, so it just works out that for the proportions, you often square in size, at least on a small height difference.

It doesn't work for all animals. Oh. For example, sauropods. Oh, wow. Yeah. They are very unusual, I will say. That makes them great. Yep.

So for a comparison of three sauropods on the small scale, I've got a margasaurus with its awesome sails on its neck. Then in the middle, I picked Sabrina's favorite, brontosaurus. Oh. Even though it's a little bit on the bigger side of medium. It's a big boy. Yeah.

And then for the biggest one, I did Patagotitan. It's not necessarily the largest sauropod, but it's really well known. We have so many bones that we can get a very precise weight estimate compared to most of the larger sauropods. Yeah, because sometimes we only have, what, fragments or maybe a femur. Yeah. You just estimate based on that. You can do an estimate for the weight, but you don't really know the length. And in order to get the length estimate, I wanted to have a more complete specimen estimate.

For the record, two out of three are diplodocoids. So both Amargosaurus and Brontosaurus slash Apatosaurus are diplodocoids, the ones famous for the long tails. Whereas Patagotitan is a titanosaur, like all of the really huge sauropods or almost all of them. So I had to sort of combine different ones if I wanted to include Brontosaurus. So it's not a perfect comparison, but...

Their sizes are kind of fun. A margasaurus was only about 11 meters long and weighs three tons. So we always describe it as a little one, shorter than a T-Rex, shorter than a lot of hadrosaurs, lighter weight than a lot of those animals too, probably lighter weight than an iguanodon even. A brontosaurus was about 21 meters long and maybe weighed about 18 tons.

So at that point, you're in the scale of larger than any animal any human has ever seen walk on Earth or any bipedal dinosaur. It's really getting up there. And yet it's only a medium-sized sauropod. Yep, because Patagotitan, this is a much reduced estimate. There have been recent estimates that brought the weight and length estimates down. Now it's thought to be about 31 meters and 55 tons. Only 55 tons. Oh, boy.

Heavy enough that if you drove it on a trailer in the US, you would get a ticket for having too much weight on your trailer. Or maybe even if it just walked on a freeway, it would cause damage. I was going to say, like you could get it on a trailer and stay on a trailer. Yeah.

So each one of these sauropods is about 10 meters longer. It was 11 meters, 21 meters and 31 meters in length. But the weight doesn't go up nearly as much. It's only six times for the first 10 meter jump going from three to 18 tons. And then it's only three times for the next 10 meter jump when it goes from 18 to 55 tons. So it's nowhere near doubling every meter in length.

But that's mostly because sauropods are a very strange body shape compared to other animals. They really stretch out their neck and tail more than they increase the bulk of the middle of their body. But it turns out with modern quadrupedal animals, the weight estimate isn't based on the total body length either, probably for similar reasons.

What you do if you're measuring a horse, cow, goat, or other livestock is you use something called the heart girth and the body length to estimate their weight. So the heart girth is literally just the width or sometimes the height of the animal.

through the heart, probably because the heart is sort of in the middle so you're not going to have a thin point at that area. And then the body length in this case doesn't include the neck or tail, it's just the bulk of the body. So sort of the chest in the front to the butt on something like a horse. One example for an adult horse, the formula is often the heart girth squared times the body length divided by 12,000.

But the denominator changes depending on the age and sometimes the breed of the horse. So you don't actually have to trot a horse up onto a scale. You just take these measurements and you get a pretty close estimate of how much it weighs, which is cool. It is.

I think this would work pretty well with sauropods too, because you can really see the difference when you look at their skeletons in the hole. Diplodocus, for example, has a pretty small heart girth and body length. So it only weighs 13 tons, despite being about 26 meters long. It's a slender dinosaur. It is. Well, it's kind of just like a small dinosaur in the middle and then long. I

I guess slender for the neck and tail. It's significantly longer than brontosaurus, but weighs quite a bit less as a result. So in conclusion, if you use just one number to describe the quote-unquote size of a dinosaur, you should always go with weight because the length can be really misleading. And that's what we always do on the show too. Well, I was thinking, because we had an episode on...

How big are dinosaurs? And I remember that being really hard to narrow down because it's like, well, how do you define big? Oh, yeah. If you have to pick, definitely go with weight. Next time someone asks. Yeah. I'm going to throw in one last example because I didn't have any huge meat eaters in the list. And I feel like some people would enjoy that. So sure. If you're into that. Yeah. If you're into that kind of thing. T-Rex and Giganotosaurus are both 13 meters and eight tons plus or minus a bit.

While a six meter megalosaurus really doesn't sound that much shorter compared to 13 meters. It's barely over a half a ton, which is less than one tenth of the weight. If you look at those specimens in museums, I'm thinking of the megalosaurus at Oxford. And then when I see Stan comparing to Stan, the T-Rex, Stan seems massive. Yeah.

Yeah, it's hard to reduce it down to one number because it is a volumetric thing. Although the megalosaurus at Oxford is just like a couple bones in a case. True, but you can kind of picture it because they give you a...

Yeah. An illustration. That's one of, I think that's a smaller one too. The number I'm giving is for a larger specimen. And with Megalosaurus in a neutral posture, you'd still be looking up to meet its eyes. Okay. So its head is probably still about two meters or more off the ground, especially if it leaned back at all. Obviously a T-Rex is a lot higher than that. But both of them, if you encounter them in nature, would be completely horrifying and you would try to

try to get away as fast as you possibly could. Actually, Megalosaurus might be scarier because you're kind of at mouth height with it. Right, and it might notice you more. You might be more worth the chase to it. And it might be more capable of chasing you too. It might be able to go faster and squeeze into narrower places. And we're not built to withstand non-avian dinosaur attacks. No armor. Yeah. But when you just hear the number like, oh, T-Rex was 13 meters and Megalosaurus is 6 meters, it makes Megalosaurus sound just...

Like half as scary. But in real life, it's like megalosaurus might be even more scary and they're just totally different. And that's World Metrology Day. More to come next May 20th. More laughs, more measurements. Yep.

Well, that wraps up this episode of I Know Dino. Thank you for listening. Stay tuned if you are a member of our Dino It All community on Patreon, especially if you're on the Triceratops tier or above. We will be having an episode of I Know Paleo coming out very soon, all about the end Eocene extinction. And if you want to join, that's patreon.com slash I Know Dino. Thanks again, and until next time. ♪ Watching me walk on my dinosaurs ♪

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