Brachiosaurus Size Compared to Man
Guessing the weight of a dinosaur isn’t a simple task.
Image: Thinkstock
Written by Emma Bastian
How do you weigh a dinosaur? It’s a simple question with a very complex answer.
Dinosaurs didn’t leave much of their bodies behind. Aside from footprints and some impressions of their skin and feathers, most dinosaur remains are the fossils, or casts, of bones. Since the bone has been replaced by other minerals, dinosaur casts are much heavier than their bones would have been. Now, scientists have come up with a new way of calculating a dinosaur’s weight using fossils.
British scientists used a laser scanner to measure the minimum amount of skin it would take to wrap around the skeletons of modern animals such as giraffes, elephants and polar bears. They then compared these ‘skin and bones’ measurements to the animals’ actual body weights.
The estimations and the actual body weight differed by nearly 21 percent for all the different animals. The scientists then applied this method to a Brachiosaur skeleton. Based on this, they figured the Brachiosaur once weighed approximately 23 tonnes, compared with previous guesses of about 80 tonnes.
Knowing the weight of a dinosaur is important for palaeontologists, because it means they can better understand not only what a dinosaur looked like, but how they moved. Could they run, walk or maybe even fly? Well a 23-tonne Brachiosaur still isn’t light enough to get off the ground, but it is looking a lot trimmer these days.
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