Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum New Dino Species Discovered

A new Dinosaur species recently discovered, was announced yesterday.
Its fossil is about 70% intact, twice as much as any other Dino yet discovered. A herbivore that broused on trees, and may be the tallest Dino ever.

http://uk.reuters.com/news/video/videoStory?videoId=68843

Wow! I thought Apatosaurus was huge. This is quite a find. Sort of like the Giraffe of the dinosaur kingdom.

Huge is right Amaranth, it took no Vitamins either.

What really interests me is what made these Dino's grow so large?
How was it possible? And why? We need a Dino expert to explain?

There was nothing big enough alive to attack them then, was there?
Oooops, I've just had a frightful thought!!

Maybe there is a still larger predator out there waiting to be discovered. Maybe T-Rex or its relatives hunted in packs, like modern day wolves. They had to be pretty smart to survive.

Has there really never been a whole dinosaur found before? There's a lot of conjecture based on 45%.

Hopefully there was nothing bigger around!!

How did they function? They would be very slow wouldn't they? Maybe they were in water like whales? I know nothing about this!!! and will now stop raving.

Their digestion maybe have been less efficient than modern animals. Maybe they needed larger stomachs to get sufficient food and the rest of the body just came along for the ride.

Interestingly, I was watching a show the other day about some work done on T-Rex where they estimate these things lived to be only 20 to 30 or so years old, which was very much less than they had originally assumed. It sounded like the technique might be applicable to other dinos. They used a particular bone to estimate age much like dating a tree through its rings. First, they confirmed the technique with modern reptiles and then applied it to T-Rex. Would be interesting to know average lifespan of the various animals and how/ whether it correlates to size.