Generally, the first thing everyone wants to know about a new dinosaur (or giant pterosaur, crocodilian, whatever) is how big it is. Sometimes the initial estimates are too big, occasionally unrealistically so - I'm looking at you, 18-meter-wingspan Quetzalcoatlus!
Then the estimates have to be downsized. Often, when I'm reading about an animal, I'm thinking "Darn! It wasn't that big after all." It's kind of disillusioning. And I'm sure others feel that way too.
But! They're still FRICKIN' HUGE. And this series of blog posts will show that.
Today: Deinosuchus. Formerly estimated at around 15 meters, from a skull reconstructed to be 1.8 m long; now estimated at around 10 meters from a skull more confidently 1.31 m long. (This is not the species' maximum size, but larger specimens are very fragmentary, so size can't be well determined.)
This is an American alligator Alligator mississippiensis (source: USFWS), scaled to the size of a Deinosuchus with 1.31 meter skull length. Human silhouette is 1.75 meters.
...pretty impressive. And they got bigger, too.
(For that matter, what are the chances that the largest individuals were among the relatively few that got fossilized, then discovered?)
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