One of the first front-runners was Brachiosaurus, a long-necked herbivore known from a paltry collection of bones uncovered in western Colorado in 1900. “With nothing quite like sauropods today,” says Macalester College paleontologist Kristi Curry-Rogers, “our work on these creatures is akin to studying aliens.” Not to mention that these dinosaurs are so strange, from the tip of their snouts to the end of their tapering tails. “The fact that literally a handful of bones indicates that there truly were terrestrial titans of near mythic proportions leaves us in sheer awe,” says University of Toronto paleontologist Cary Woodruff. But even these enormous animals weren’t the largest of all. Dinosaurs such as Brontosaurus and Diplodocus conveyed the standard image of these plant eaters to museumgoers for more than a century. These quadrupedal herbivores are immediately recognizable by their tiny heads, long necks, hefty bodies and tapering tails. rex was 40 feet long and weighed nine tons-all of the very largest dinosaurs belonged to a group called sauropods. Incomplete fossils, evolving techniques, and the paleontological preoccupation with enormous dinosaurs have all played into the constant quest to find the biggest creature to walk the planet.Īlthough many dinosaurs lived large-the famous T.

The shrinkage comes as part of a long history of supersized dinosaurs that have been downsized after their initial discovery. What was heralded as the largest dinosaur of all in 2014 has wound up in a neck-and-neck tie with several other dinosaurian giants such as Argentinosaurus. The full length of the dinosaur is in question, too, especially as no complete skeleton is known. In a new study of the available Patagotitan fossils, representing several individuals of differing ages, paleontologist Alejandro Otero and his colleagues have slimmed down Patagotitan to around 57 tons. The dinosaur’s long neck, bulging body and long tail stretched about 120 feet long, with the living animal estimated to weigh in at more than 70 tons. Dubbed Patagotitan mayorum, the reconstructed skeleton of the 100-million-year-old dinosaur was so huge that it didn’t even fit wholly inside the room in which it stood. On August 9, 2017, paleontologists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City unveiled the largest animal ever to walk the earth.

My Beloved Brontosaurus by Brian Switek