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Massive props to the authors of the Dreadnoughtus papers, this has to be one of the best documented and figured sauropods of all time, and in quite a short span of time (the specimen was just named four years ago!).
Of course what everyone wants to discuss is the size of Dreadnoughtus. The mass has been downsized a few times since the initial description's claim of 59 tonnes; I don't have anything new to add other than what has been said previously (i.e. it wasn't as big as Argentinosaurus, Patagotitan, the Mexico "Alamosaurus" or Puertasaurus).
Length-wise I get 23 meters along the curve of the back, a bit shorter than the 26 meters in the original paper. Most of that is due to my interpreting a large cervical as the 10th rather than the 9th cervical. Doing so has a knock-on effect that shortens the estimate for most of the cervical vertebrae. It's still got a heck of a long neck, even for a titanosaur. I'd be remiss not to point out that there's no way to tell which position is correct at this point - we will need more Dreadnoughtus cervicals to know for certain, but in the absence of any additional data I'm going with the more conservative interpretation.
Of course what everyone wants to discuss is the size of Dreadnoughtus. The mass has been downsized a few times since the initial description's claim of 59 tonnes; I don't have anything new to add other than what has been said previously (i.e. it wasn't as big as Argentinosaurus, Patagotitan, the Mexico "Alamosaurus" or Puertasaurus).
Length-wise I get 23 meters along the curve of the back, a bit shorter than the 26 meters in the original paper. Most of that is due to my interpreting a large cervical as the 10th rather than the 9th cervical. Doing so has a knock-on effect that shortens the estimate for most of the cervical vertebrae. It's still got a heck of a long neck, even for a titanosaur. I'd be remiss not to point out that there's no way to tell which position is correct at this point - we will need more Dreadnoughtus cervicals to know for certain, but in the absence of any additional data I'm going with the more conservative interpretation.
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I haven't done GDI estimates, and honestly with what is known the error bars would be too big to tell for sure anyhow. But Patagotitan looks almost exactly the same size as my estimate for Puertasaurus (which assumes it's a scaled up Futalognkosaurus), and both have smaller torsos (in side view) than Argentinosaurus, so if they are all equally rotund (which we don't know) I'd assume Argentinosaurus is larger. Scaling my composite adult Alamosaurus isometrically up to the size of the Mexican tibia also puts in in the same ballpark as Argentinosaurus, but again, we don't know enough about the three-dimensional shape of the rib cage to really know which is the largest with any precision.

It was said about both. First for Dreadnoughtus in 2014 (though subsequent papers have challenged the size claim) and more recently for Patagotitan. Both have significant portions of the skeleton known, though neither are known from a single articulated specimen - Dreadnoughtus is known from two specimens, while Patagotitan is known from several. It's easier to cross-scale elements in Dreadnoughtus, and for now at least Dreadnoughtus is described in much greater detail.

Cool! By the way, does Patagotitan's description change anything for the other lognkosaurs? I mean, are your Futalognokosaurus and Puertasaurus as good as always, or updates need to be made? What about Argentinosaurus? Did Patagotitan's material help you make up for the poor preservation of Argentinosaurus?
I'm asking this because, if I recall correctly, a recent analysis put Patagotitan extremely close to Argentinosaurus.
I'm asking this because, if I recall correctly, a recent analysis put Patagotitan extremely close to Argentinosaurus.
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