one for sure though. it knew how to work smarter instead of work harder. it became that large with living a comfortable lifestyle that risks its life as much as others
Some random African spinosaurine one day: "I know what to do today! I'm going to evolve in an increasingly convoluted and obfuscated manner so that no one knows what me and my descendants were even like!" Cue Spinosaurus
I wouldn’t be surprised if spine is a mishmash of species. It can’t swim well but it can’t walk well, did it just lay on the shore, rolling about hoping to find a fish?
@@sealboy1211 C. M. Kosemen (one of the people behind All Yesterdays) has a hypothesis like that. Long story short, the original Spinosaurus remains are from a very Baronyx/Suchomimus-esque animal (like we assumed Spinosaurus was during the 2000's) while the paddle tail is from a smaller Deltadromeus-esque animal specialized for swimming. Very speculative on the latter half, but it makes the whole debate much less messy.
Because T rex fans are still taking a lot of copium, trying to keep T Rex as the biggest, when there are at least 3 dinosaurs that are definitively larger. 🤣😂
Ah Yes, The notorious "Sorex Macrophagus", Falsly Identified as a relative of the North American Least Shrew...It soon accrued the name "North American MOST Shrew", But it has more in relation to the Common Shrew. It was a subterranean Super Predator that preferred tunneling under ground and surfacing under the feet of its Favourite prey, The American Mastodon, Forming a sort of small sinkhole under the creature and trapping it before finishing it off, The MOST SHREW was also theorized to lay in wait underground near ecological hotspots, Caving in the ground when a suitable target approaches, Like a gigantic Antlion. The Lower estimates put the "Most Shrew", at about 40-45 tons, But This Individual claims that he has found the Prime Shrew, I hearby Request you to kindly hand it over to the nearest Museum, For the sake of science.
A reminder that the recent study of Rex potentially getting up to 15 tons for the largest hypothetical individuals EXPLICITLY applies to ALL megatheropods as per the authors, they only used Rex as an example because it’s the least likely to have that kind of massive size variation not preserved by the fossil record (due to having more known adult specimens than the rest combined)
@bkjeong4302 This is why I don’t get why other channels that talk about this paper; don’t start off with this fact. People watch the videos will just immediately go with; OH This is proof that Rex is the biggest or looks like Scotty just got bigger! If these videos would just start off with the fact that this is just a hypothesis and more of a fun study than actual proof; it might actually promote people to start thinking of their own ways of looking into these things! Sadly, that’s not the case for most people; the moment I look at any common section on the paper it’s just immediately oh, Rex is the biggest or we have just found the biggest Rex! Still gotta love the enthusiasm though!
Also considering how dangerous the waters were and how it lived with sauropods (but likely didn't hunt them) a spinosaurus being super large would ultimately benefit it.
Another argument in favor of your giant deinocheirus hypothesis: Being partially herbivorous requires a larger gut to ferment plant material, and having access to fish and aquatic resources would allow it to bulk up. It has the same omnivorous decipe for large body size as bears like the kodiak, allowing for access to marine resources and a flexible diet that ensures calories can almost always be found and acquired.
Deinocheirus has been one of my favorite dinosaurs for years. I like the idea that it was also the largest therapist ever, and it definitely could make sense if it was. Edit. It has been brought to my attention that my phone autocorrected therapod to therapist. But I'm leaving it. Because you never know, maybe they were.
@@TheVividenI would have to kind of disagree about the last part of the video tho the main premise is fight a T.rex would have at least a lot of protein bc the prey it hunted were large like trike, trike would be the same or even bigger then a T.rex so it would have a lot of meat(ik there where more prey that T.Rex would hunt but I am going to use trike as a example) so even tho there could be a very big spino or dein as big as cope there could be a T.rex the same size as those large specimens(if I got anything wrong I would be happy if you corrected me on those things)
@@Steam537 I kinda don't understand what your talking about. Are you saying that the reason T-rex got as large is because it was hunting something larger than itself(Triceratops)? Do you mean in your opinion Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus would not get as big as COPE and other even larger estimations of T-rex because they hunted smaller prey? Or do you mean even if Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus specimens that were far larger than T-rex were to be found, there would always be T-rex as large as them because T-rex hunt Larger Prey? if the last one is what you were trying to say then. I don't think that's the case. hunting larger animal doesn't mean it would be larger than animals that hunt smaller prey, its all in the Cost and Benefit. Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus can comfortably use Far less energy to get far more Meat and Grass. they don't have to risk their life to eat their meals like others. Spinosaurus is like bears, Kodiac bear is only that big due to it doesn't have to risk its life as much and it can comfortably eat fish and get bigger and bigger. so is Deinocheirus. they just have far more likely to attain size far quicker than others
@@kimnorth7060 We don’t particularly have any huge land predators that exist today, and even in the past 60+ million years we haven’t had anything that even compares to carnivorous megatheropods.The fact there were so many enormous dinosaurs from one family and the fact they dominated their niches for so long is just something I find super interesting. There’s a lot of questions we still have about megatheropods and I think many of the answers lie somewhere in the carcharodontosauridae family.
@@kimnorth7060 Of course tyrannosauridae is interesting and there’s a lot of knowledge we can gain from them, but the family as a whole isn’t as large physically as the carcharodontosauridae. Even more so than that, the biggest of them, T-rex, has many very complete skeletons and while i’m sure there’s much more to learn about it, it’s also not so much of a mystery as it was in the past. Many of the carcharodontosaurids are only known from fragmentary remains and thus leave a lot more to be discovered. They seem to have set a very supreme standard for large carnivorous theropods and we still know relatively little about them compared to the aforementioned T-rex.
our sitting duckbear Platipus Spinoboi will be the one to win in the end. it knows how to live easy life, it doesn't work harder and knows to Work smarter 🗿🗿. it is a middle Child that just watches its Sibling fight for dominance in contempt. it knows its limits but never truly out of picture. It Slowly grinding fish For EXP. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
SA and NA battling for decades about who's got the biggest dog, and then all of a sudden they discover some 14 tonne Australian megatheropod. It would be very funny.
I have seen a real T rex skull and Carcharodontosaurus side by side. Carcharodontosaurus is definitely larger. 3 dinos were larger than t rex - carcharodontosaurus, spino and giga. T-rex fans use weight to try give it a fighting chance. Spino is obviously the largest, in terms of height and length, and possibly even weight.
Great stuff, and I appreciate your emphasis on clearing up a lot of the misconceptions surrounding the study. Also good point on the limit being less biomechanical and more ecological. Keep up the good work!
This was such a well-researched and put together video, It's so great to see one of those "size ranking" videos for dinosaurs that doesn't sensationalize or put down any concrete claims based on unreliable evidence, while still treating the dinosaurs like actual animals that lived in the context of their environment :) Excellent work!!
I would like to point out that the idea that T-Rex specimens have hit a sort of ceiling in terms of growth isn’t just baseless speculation. We have found numerous species of Megatheropod whose largest sizes have been around 13 meters long (Spino was longer, but weighed less). Having numerous species of Megatheropod dinosaurs over a span of like 90 million years of fossil record show that 13 meters is the biggest we know of is very good reason to believe they didn’t get much bigger than that. With Sauropods it’s a different story, as their body structure is perfectly designed to support colossal bodymass. In fact all land animals we know of to reach an excess of 15 tons in weight are Quadrapeds. I mean we can’t definitively rule out that there were VENOMOUS Megatheropods either, but the entire paleontological context surrounding the topic makes it pretty clear that isn’t the case and that we will never find a 5 foot dinosaur skull with special grooves in its teeth or whatever. And if the entire surrounding field of paleontology shows no evidence that Theropod Dinosaurs reached the kind of sizes that this paper speculates with statistical comparison to a distantly related group of extant animals, that should be what we take to be the case. I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s literally impossible that such a creature ever existed, but it’s not something we should leave on the table. All this tells us is what could hypothetically, theoretically, possibly be found out there (except probably not, even the authors would say so). Therefore we should believe that is not the case until evidence suggests otherwise.
I disagree, animals have a tendency to grow larger depending on what the current habitat/environment is. Humans for example have grown larger than our previous ancestors, just because we haven't discovered it yet doesn't mean it never happened.
@@tvvistedv3nom26 That is the case for basically all animals in the fossil record. It is statistically a fact that we haven’t found the largest T-Rex that ever lived, but that much larger?… Bipeds are have vastly different biomechanical challenges. Even at currently accepted sizes we were stumped for a while as to how T-Rex would even get up from the ground. Having to support over 15 tons on just two crooked legs is not a challenge easily overcome as it is, much less while engaging in a predatory lifestyle. Also I don’t know how a study would quantify such a suggestion. ”All”? Every single species? Even ones that like T-Rex face biomechanical circumstances entirely unique to itself due to size, bulk and bipedalism? Sounds weird
@@user-oj6re6ju9t You’re making a generalized point for a specific case. If you were using this point to claim that we haven’t simply discovered the largest specimen of any one species, I’d agree. But you’re using it as an argument to support this specific case, which has literal tonnes of factors complicating things that I have already adressed. And you’re using it to justify the possibility of a T-Rex 70% larger than the current accepted size range based on fossil evidence. You could do this song and dance for any animal and funnily enough, T-Rex is one of the few animals that it’s the least applicable to, it being the most massive bipedal animal to ever live, bipedalism of course being one of the worst ways in the history of life to support gigantic bodymass, as virtually any biped can be matched to a quadraped that is a full order of magnitude larger than it. This is why Sauropods are the ones we should be thinking about this way and not Tyrannosaurs. We should not be assuming without good evidence that it’s even possible for a T-Rex to grow 70% larger than the largest known adult specimen in the fossil record. In fact for most animals in the fossil record BUT T-Rex we could be thinking this more justifiably.
There are actually three likely 12 meter + Mapusaurus specimens from the bonebed. Alongside 108.145 there was also 108.169 (incomplete maxilla bigger than that of the biggest Acrocanthosaurus specimen), 202 ( Fibula longer than that of the Giganotosaurus holotype).
All potentially huge! I hesitate to assign solid body lengths to a maxilla or fibula in isolation, since those elements can see a lot of variation in isolation, but whatever they belonged to were certainly big animals!
IIrc, using Random's recon of Mapusaurus, you can get 108.145 to 10.7 tonnes, which is insane! Still an awful specimen however, so I pray to god no one uses it in AvA's.
It will be used in ava soon u like it or not just like how we use E.D cope, Dentary Giga, Leviathan Sauro , Spinosaurinae indet in ava cuz they're big@@theskyis_black9074
@@TheVividenyea, he’s disappeared off the face of the planet. However, other news on the Meg is in the works, so we should get something at the very least. Do you plan to make this sort of video for the largest known ancient marine macropredatory animals? It be really fun to watch.
Sauroniops is a highly controversial species and is still debated over its actual existence as a species, vividen doesnt put it on the list cause its a list of definite species and doesnt include dubious species
although your speculation about spinosaurus and deinocheirus is based i can definitely see some random carcharodontosaur being the hypothetical largest theropod ever. Those theropods were evolved to take on colossal sauropods. In the evolutionary arms race where sauropods get bigger to repel more efficiently the menace of predators, charcarodontosaurs would inevitably grow larger and larger to kill those sauropods more effectively. Unrelated but will you make a video about the small chinese tyrannosarid asityrannus xui discovered recently?
I like this guy's honesty of the uncertainty of the topic. A lot of others want to make concrete claims with our relatively limited data at the moment for many of these animals.
Suggestions for Theropod Paleoecology videos: Morisson Formation Kem Kem Group Nemegt Formation Huincul Formation if Meraxes and Mapusaurus were contemporaries. Xiashaximao and Shishougu Formations Wessex Formation
That’s definitely fascinating to think about. Do we know if meraxes and mapusaurus lived together. What a place that would have been if true. Mike from Prehistoric Magazine
Shouldnt forget that trex reached 11 tons hardly with over 40 specimens. Adult rex were 6-8 tons in 2015s based on stan. While other large carcharadontosaurids with 1-3 specimens reached 9-10 tons with ease. That means they gonna be lot larger if other specimens gets discovered. I do think carcharadontosaurids definilety gonna be bigger than any tyrannosaurid in general. Even comparing all tyrannosauird and carcharadontosaurids. Ends up most carcharadontosautid dinosaurs over 6 tons while only 3 tyrannosaurids reaches over 6 ton range. I mean mapusaurus giganotosaurus carcharadontosaurus tyrannotitan acrocanthosaurus. They bigger in averages already
Tyrannosaurids in general were still in the process of evolution and considering that tyrannosaurus itself as a species is composed of 8-10 tonnes individuals such as Stan, trix, samson, cope, sue, scotty and several others compared to the giga holotypes 8 ton mass, mapusaurs 6-8 ton mass, carcharodontosaurs 7-8 ton mass ect. Its not actually evidential to state that based off the fossil record given that these are externally unquantifiable inputs. You could have a larger than usual giganfound and we simply haven't found smaller ones. We could have found small rexes comparatively ect. T rex was still substantially larger on average at 8-9 tonnes compared to the others save the giga whom obtained max size estimates of around 7-8 tonnes
Gotta love how when they upscaled Giga to be about 500KG less heavy than scotty, wich was a reach, the T rex media was like "... oh yeah, scotty is old news, here is Cope, he was at least one ton over scotty, also the t rex could move at almost 30kmh and had a even more powerful bite than we ha previously estimated", and the reaction wa "AH FACK!"
Scott, at about 10 tons, if even right, was a very old TRex at 30YO, with Sue being a close competitor at 29YO. They already were the big guys intheir environment (except for Alamosaurus if even on the menu).The only specimen of a Meraxes Gigas we have was 53YO, almost twice the age of Sue, when he died and barely reaching adulthood. Here lies the problem. We know how big a T-Rex would be as he got too old to keep going, because of health and associated issues, but how old could a Carcharodontosaur get and then how Big, if all the stars allign, given it still was a midget compared to what possibly was in his main course?
I completely agree on the your Deinocheirus evaluation, and I could understand Deinocheirus needing a massive size to survive against predators like Tarbosaurus. I partly agree on your Spinosaurus conclusion. Now this is just complete speculation and what I think would make sense, but while Spinosaurus has plenty of food to get massive, I don't see why it would need that size, compared to, for example, Tyrannosaurus requiring it to be able to have a chance against the herbivorous giants in Hell Creek. But I completely understand a Spinosaurus getting fat on fish for the sake of it, and definitely believe it could happen. Great video as always! While I love Tyrannosaurus, megatheropods and their sizes, seeing this speculative paper based on no real fossil evidence just doesn't really add anything for me to the animals, and I honestly fond it quite unnecessary. All it does is create misinformation that can get spread very easily, I can almost guarantee I will see a "Rex can get to 18 tonnes!" or "Giga can get to 17 tonnes!" comment in the near future.
The original reason I wanted to make this video was to address the claims surrounding that paper, actually. I do not want people throwing 15-ton rex around without the remains to support it, and you just know they're taking it out of context. Also good point about Spino! It probably wouldn't have the same pressure for massive size as Tyrannosaurus, although perhaps one could investigate why Kodiak grizzlies are so large given their own diets.
@@TheVividen Indeed! I will definetly look into those bears. Kodiak bears make a good comparison to Spinosaurus, but the bears also can eat vegetation ofcourse which means they have an even more abundant food source than just fish.
@@TheVividen How often do you think Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus would come into contact with eachother, in terms of contending with eachother, my assumption is quite rarely?
@@Tyrannosaurus_rex. I mean, they could get that big to potentially scare away carcharodontosaurs or other animals to get themselves an even bigger territory to feed on ?
@@Tyrannosaurus_rex. i think Spinosaurus would just be getting Bigger purely based on competition among its own species. The larger you are, the more Part of the River is yours. the sail could have also aided in intimidating other spinosaurus too. you never know. I think it definitely had a reason for getting bigger since its already so big already. why not more. our angry DinoDuck wouldn't mind for fish 🤣🤣
Thankfully Tyrannosaurus rex has very complete fossils,thus it likely has the most accurate size predictions. Plus you can use T.rex to predict the size of its close relatives. Oddly, Tyrannosaurs aren’t closely related to most other megatheropods.
@@TheVividenThe big Coelurosauria most closely related to Tyrannosaurs maybe Megaraptors [which maybe big armed Tyrannosaurs]. Otherwise the nearest relatives of Tyrannosaurs are a bunch of birds and near-birds.
A famous paleontologist (can't remember the name) was presenting a lecture somewhere in Europe in 2004, about the Sue specimen and her potential awareness of being a super predator. It was an eye opening theory on potential and speculative psychology of animals long gone, and how those factors might've influenced the animal's further impact on its environment. The paleontologist was then asked: "Well about the Scotty specimen?" And the paleontologist answered: "Oh, Scotty? Scotty didn't know."
Vividen, I assume you’re a bit in the know about the Cope specimen… any idea when the paper/measurements are coming out? This year? Soon? Any information you can give, however vague, is greatly appreciated!
Hi! We should have 3D scans of the bones able to share this year. Hopefully within the next couple of months we'll have the skull recon and the femur, possibly the giant dorsal vert as well.
Something I want to mention is that while volumetric modeling methods can be much more precise when determining mass, there’s still an element of artistic license that’s taken into account when restoring amounts of soft tissue and applying density values to each body segment. Sue, for example has been estimated between 8,000-10,000Kg+ using the same method, but has varying results based on how the experts reconstructed them. When it comes to specimens that are less complete such as Scotty, more artistic liberties need to be taken when restoration missing body parts, which widens the margin of error even further.
Great and very interesting video friend, I was a little surprised by your answer about the 2 largest potential theropods, however your logic makes sense, especially with deinocheirus. For a long time it seems to me that the ornithomimosauria family had great potential to develop such body plans. massive like the gigantic hadrosaurids, about spinosaurus the only thing that continues to baffle me is that pelvis and femur so reduced for such a long body, it makes me scratch my head until it bleeds, but well, sometimes nature is so surprisingly wise that no matter how logical they are, Let us always surprise us, as you clearly show in your example of the rhinoceros overturning and emerging unharmed as if it were a doll. I'm a bit impatient to know more about Ed Cope, Bertha and Saurophanax and with a little good luck more osteological info about Giganotosaurus will come out. greetings from Mexico!
So the slim agile narrow skulled carch and giga are potentially bigger, but its more likely that the broad skulled more stocky powerhouse of a brute the tyrannosaurus rex would have more use in being bigger. Typically animals that rely on slicing and bleeding out their prey are slimmer and smaller, while the ones that rely on raw power are bigger with greater defense to compensate for lower agility.
Ah yes the mega therapods. Got a soft spot for allosaurids in general, but when it comes to megatherapods how can you not love them all equally? I mean you have the giant death duck, the mega death stork/mega death merganser, the absolute powerhouse of ripping and tearing, the greatest lord of the lizard eaters (YES LAWD!) and a fairly large contimgent of arch skulled bone saw toothed bois with chins that you could pop the cap of a beer on.
Tyrannosaurus could have also potentially broke past the size limit just to overwhelm its prey though the spinosaurus and deinocheirus suggestions have merit
I could see either a Spino and deinocheirus for the reasons you give, as well a charcharadontasaurid ( either a known, or new) due to the species being normally large
Spinosaurus not just because of the size but just how weird it is. Plus the Kem Kem beds in general are weird. It’s also what I’m studying for my EPQ and what I wish to study when I get into palaeontology at university (a coincidence but still cool is that it’s the same university as N. Ibrahim)
Keenan Taylor's Tales of Kaimere features a fictional extinct tyrannosaur that formed a kind of symbiosis with a giant hadrosaur as a 'farmer', protecting the herd from intruders while hunting away from the nesting colonies.
Just adding this: Allometric methods shouldn't be discounted. I used to think they weren't as precise as volumetric methods too, but femur-circumference estimates are backed up by physics and testing on modern animals. See Dr. James Napoli explaining it in this video (from the 25 minute mark onward): ruclips.net/video/GhULxhwMBJk/видео.html
I love the human tendency to either destroy or hoard such fragile millenia year old fossils. Just imagine what information on these animals that we've lost due to terrible conflicts or the wrong people getting there hands on the remains (Many worse things have come from war, I'm just saying that this one is hard to stomach as well, at least for me).
Aquatic creatures tend to be bigger than their terrestrial counterparts, by seeing how poorly we know about spionosaurids (especially spinosaurus) it's not far from reality to assume that a gigachad of spinosaurus exceeds 15 tons in mass :) By the way do you have any recent size estimation of the brazilian giant theropod (Gomez)?
Predators tend to grow in accordance with the available prey right? Ecological arm's race and all that. I understand that carcharodontosaurs had a very different build and hunting method to tyrannosaurs but I just can't shake the feeling that the biggest land predator ever must have been a giant sauropod hunter like Mapu or Giga. Tyrannosaurus is such a ridiculous outlier in terms of mass compared to its closest relatives (notice how it's the only tyrannosaur on the list) so who's to say that there couldn't have been a massive carcharodontosaur outlier too? And in a family that regularly grows to 6-10 tonnes I wouldn't be shocked by a 15 tonne species
The problem with your theory is that Sauropod hunters like Carcharodontosaurus for example don't actively hunt for the adults. They instead prey on bite sized hatchlings or juveniles. So the tendency to get bigger to outcompete its competitors is impossible against Sauropods. Yes, Spinosaurus lived the same time as the Carcharodontosaurus but with the current idea that Spinosaurus was more dominant to live on shores, how frequently did they encounter one and another to force an evolutionary arm's race?
Can you please cover how big was the original Spinosaurus discovered and that was destroyed? Can you cover if it was really 18 meters long and if so how heavy was it really? Ive heard 20 tones for 18m individual but could you cover if that would be true or nonesense? (Edit thanks to some comments): I want explanations not claims. As far as ive heard the biggest individual was destroyed so I dont care much about the newer estimates based on the much smaller new found individuals. And what I would want to know is wether the biggest discovered ones that were destroyed in the museums, actually were 18m long and if so how heavy would a 18m long individual be. And if it would be possible to make some estimates based on the data we might have saved, like pictures or if we actually have some bones saved from said biggest individuals or any other data that is left of them.
@@Mr_ChubutensisI want explanations not claims. As far as ive heard the biggest individual was destroyed so I dont care much about the newer estimates based on the much smaller found individuals. And what I would want to know is wether the biggest discovered ones that were destroyed in the museums, actually were 18m long and if so how heavy would a 18m long individual be.
Hey Vividen! I love your content, especially how you dive deep into the nuances of paleontology. I was wondering if you could explore the idea that many species of pachycephalosaurids might actually represent different growth stages or morphs of the same species? I've heard some paleontologists suggest this, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it in a future video. Keep up the amazing work!
I'm aware of the reclassification of Dracorex, Stygimoloch, and Pachycephalosaurus as potentially being the same species, but I'm curious if this concept could apply to other pachycephalosaurids as well. It would be fascinating to explore how widespread this might be within the group.
Paleontologists: "hey I found half of a hip. Time to make up a new dinosaur out of it." Very good video, I enjoyed it👍 I wish we could find more complete skeletons like rex or at least a whole skull
Bagger 293 and Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60 are 14000 tonne vehicles that help mine coal. They are both kinetic structures capable of movement. F60 is more than half a kilometer in length. I think the absolute hard biomechanical limits on organism size are probably closer to that sort of range than any actually evolved animal.
In my opinion, i think why Tarbo and Theri is not included is bc they're also holotypes and not really fully studied which means those specimens are not full grown specimens... Another of my opinion is that Tarbo might be able to reach 8 tonnes, Therizinosaurus might also reach 7.9 tonnes to 8.7 tonnes...
@@monsterzero521 bc they're also holotype skeletons and fragments like I said, the scientists do not know what those real creatures would look like if he fossils are complete so you have a point too.!
@@monsterzero521 they would be included yet since we don't know much of them, the scientists did not even speculate or had announced if the Tarbo and theri were fully grown specimen skeletons...
@@niquisshadelasada162 we don't know much about any giant theropods except for the T rex. So that applies to Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Tyrannotitan which are in the top 9
I love the way you explained how we don't actually know what we think we know about these creatures and all we can do is speculate as to their size and how they looked. MY CONCLUSION: THE ONLY WAY TO TRULY KNOW IS TO RESURRECT THEM, DAMN THE SCIENTIFIC CONSEQUENCES! 😂
To share my opinion, I don’t think that a 18 ton racks is impossible, keep in mind that we found a Saurophaganax that was double the size it was supposed to be, although it wouldn’t be the average I wouldn’t write out the possibility entirely that a Tyrannosaurus could get that back.
The assumption that volumetric methods are inherently more precise than femur allometry is not generally agreed upon by the literature. Benson and Campeone are some of the leading experts on dinosaur metabolism, growth, and histology, and they consistently use long bone measurements based on the tight correlation between these measurements and the mass of modern animals. The heavily pneumatic tissues of saurischians complicate volumetric calculations and rely more heavily on assumptions of respiratory volume and soft tissue reconstruction that can’t be robustly demonstrated.
Iam still supporting my boy spinosaurus for being the largest although it would be easier if some of these specimens weren't sold under the black market that way we can get some definitive answers.
still salty about the rumor about 2.5 meter skull rumor ? if it was proven true. it would definitely be phenomenal. well. they seems to have the means to it
Elephant looks way to small in this picture, considering it overlaps in weight with many of these dinosaurs. Some of these genuinely look they could be 2x the weight.
I’m surprised that we were underestimating the toughness of animals. I thought from the commonly accepted info that rex just had brittle bones, but it’s possible that they’re just less dense now after fossilisation. It’s nice to know that rex is fairly accurately portrayed as a tank
That recent paper makes me wonder if we could do the same thing for Dunkleosteus. It would be pretty difficult considering that there are no more arthrodires and that all modern fish are either more derived (eugnathstomes) or less derived (hagfish and lampreys), but it'd be interesting to try.
Tbh, the 15 metric tonnes result we got from the paper doesn’t sound that crazy when you consider the fact that Scotty had a good chance at weighing over 10 tonnes himself. That’s absolutely gargantuan and ultra rare of course, but 1 in 2.5 billion rare? Now, a 17 to 18-tonne Rex on the other hand,….. yeah, I could see there being only one of that. And that old fucker was probably lethargic as hell.
now add in one of those hormonal disorder where it makes them grow far larger. now that would have made a monster that would make scientists and archeologists question their reality.
Amazing, I personally think that it's quite plausible for Megatheropods to reach sizes much larger than the largest individuals found. Many people should realize that the study applies to all Theropods and that it's the theoretical maximum size. Additionally, estimates can vary, so the maximum size can really vary, and some specimens are fragmentary, making them much more complicated to estimate size. I will point out the fact that Tyrannosaurus Rex is an Archosaur so using other Archosaurs is quite accurate, but using alligators is not the best example since they are not as closely related. Tyrannosaurus Rex probably had a lot or a good amount of individual variation and sexual dimorphism, since many Tyrannosaurus Rex specimens have anatomical differences. So using alligators is not the best method since alligators have a lot of individual variation and size variation, and Tyrannosaurus Rex individual variation and size variation is still being debated on. Using modern Dinosaurs, the birds, is much more effective since Tyrannosaurus Rex is much more related to Maniraptorans. The study was amazing either way, credits to the authors. I really like the way you discuss the study carefully with precision and include all the pieces of information in a amazing way. Amazing, keep up the good work.
So you believe out of the millions and millions of T-Rex that lived, we have found basically the biggest possible in the 80 or so specimens we have found? Right
A total of 2.5 billion T. Rexes had lived over the course of 2.5 million years. The unfortunate part is that fossilization is extremely rare, and specimens that were fossilized have yet to be unearthed.
I have a feeling that dinosaurs are the kind of thing that we think we know shit, but if we actually could see them, we would have our minds blown away.
so there is talk of the game the isle adding the spino the first thing that came to my mid is what the babies would look like, and how would the spine develope,id be intrested in what you think
I love how the more we find of Spinosaurus, the less we actually know about it.
one for sure though. it knew how to work smarter instead of work harder. it became that large with living a comfortable lifestyle that risks its life as much as others
Some random African spinosaurine one day: "I know what to do today! I'm going to evolve in an increasingly convoluted and obfuscated manner so that no one knows what me and my descendants were even like!"
Cue Spinosaurus
@@timexyemerald6290ont devient grand par nécessité donc sa vie devait pas être si facile que vous le pensez
I wouldn’t be surprised if spine is a mishmash of species. It can’t swim well but it can’t walk well, did it just lay on the shore, rolling about hoping to find a fish?
@@sealboy1211 C. M. Kosemen (one of the people behind All Yesterdays) has a hypothesis like that. Long story short, the original Spinosaurus remains are from a very Baronyx/Suchomimus-esque animal (like we assumed Spinosaurus was during the 2000's) while the paddle tail is from a smaller Deltadromeus-esque animal specialized for swimming. Very speculative on the latter half, but it makes the whole debate much less messy.
I don't know why I laughed so hard when you put the question mark next to spino when you were comparing dinos to rex😭😭
Poor Spino 😔
@@TheVividen Fr, my boy forever changes😭🙏
@@zeno_xy9669😢
Even with his status, I Still Love my spined crocodile-cosplaying mega dinosaur!!❤
Because T rex fans are still taking a lot of copium, trying to keep T Rex as the biggest, when there are at least 3 dinosaurs that are definitively larger. 🤣😂
I am hiding a 50 ton mega-shrew in my basement that will put to shame any other superpredator >:)
The Yellowstone Supershrew
Ah Yes, The notorious "Sorex Macrophagus", Falsly Identified as a relative of the North American Least Shrew...It soon accrued the name "North American MOST Shrew", But it has more in relation to the Common Shrew.
It was a subterranean Super Predator that preferred tunneling under ground and surfacing under the feet of its Favourite prey, The American Mastodon, Forming a sort of small sinkhole under the creature and trapping it before finishing it off, The MOST SHREW was also theorized to lay in wait underground near ecological hotspots, Caving in the ground when a suitable target approaches, Like a gigantic Antlion. The Lower estimates put the "Most Shrew", at about 40-45 tons, But This Individual claims that he has found the Prime Shrew, I hearby Request you to kindly hand it over to the nearest Museum, For the sake of science.
@@TheVividen wut happened to Yellowstone Mega Something something drama lately 🤔🤔
@@timexyemerald6290 its just a big megalodon
I know a few mammal paleontologists whose wet dreams you just described
A reminder that the recent study of Rex potentially getting up to 15 tons for the largest hypothetical individuals EXPLICITLY applies to ALL megatheropods as per the authors, they only used Rex as an example because it’s the least likely to have that kind of massive size variation not preserved by the fossil record (due to having more known adult specimens than the rest combined)
Exactly!
well 18 meter Spinosaurus looking good
@bkjeong4302
This is why I don’t get why other channels that talk about this paper; don’t start off with this fact.
People watch the videos will just immediately go with; OH This is proof that Rex is the biggest or looks like Scotty just got bigger!
If these videos would just start off with the fact that this is just a hypothesis and more of a fun study than actual proof; it might actually promote people to start thinking of their own ways of looking into these things!
Sadly, that’s not the case for most people; the moment I look at any common section on the paper it’s just immediately oh, Rex is the biggest or we have just found the biggest Rex!
Still gotta love the enthusiasm though!
@@hcollins9941And that is exactly why I made this video--to clarify what the study was actually saying.
I thought that they used t.rex just because its so complete, and other megatheropods would be impossible due to them being so fragmentery
Megatheropods are my favourite dinosaurs
Same!
Also considering how dangerous the waters were and how it lived with sauropods (but likely didn't hunt them) a spinosaurus being super large would ultimately benefit it.
Another argument in favor of your giant deinocheirus hypothesis: Being partially herbivorous requires a larger gut to ferment plant material, and having access to fish and aquatic resources would allow it to bulk up. It has the same omnivorous decipe for large body size as bears like the kodiak, allowing for access to marine resources and a flexible diet that ensures calories can almost always be found and acquired.
"The Big Nine Max sized specimens" gave me the nine titans vibes from Attack on Titan haha
Reject giga embrace Copium rex
Copium is not usable, the most useable largest rex was Scotty at 10.6 tons
Nah thank
But giga is my favorite mega theropod
reject copium rex, embrace deinosuchus (real)
There's no need to reject anything--there's plenty of room for all the megatheropods out there!
9 Giants.
The Fellowship of the Sharpteeth.
Plus one very confused omnivore.
@@jacqueshejeije7499 He a little confused but he has the spirit!
LOTR and paleontology were my two biggest loves in 5th grade so I greatly appreciate this comment.
If it was me, I would change Saurophaganax with Acrocanthosaurus since the latter is better studied and undoubtedly a valid genus unlike the former.
Deinocheirus has been one of my favorite dinosaurs for years. I like the idea that it was also the largest therapist ever, and it definitely could make sense if it was.
Edit. It has been brought to my attention that my phone autocorrected therapod to therapist. But I'm leaving it. Because you never know, maybe they were.
natures first therapist, one of the biggest too
emotional support deinocheirus
Caring and Supportive Therapist Deinocheirus Listens to You and Asks Questions about your Life and Health (ASMR)
The what?
Copium Rex is the boggy man
I’d be insane that despite the dangerous lifestyle we’d keep finding bigger and bigger Rex than even cope or bertha
And more info is coming soon about Cope!
@@TheVividenI would have to kind of disagree about the last part of the video tho the main premise is fight a T.rex would have at least a lot of protein bc the prey it hunted were large like trike, trike would be the same or even bigger then a T.rex so it would have a lot of meat(ik there where more prey that T.Rex would hunt but I am going to use trike as a example) so even tho there could be a very big spino or dein as big as cope there could be a T.rex the same size as those large specimens(if I got anything wrong I would be happy if you corrected me on those things)
@@Steam537 I kinda don't understand what your talking about.
Are you saying that the reason T-rex got as large is because it was hunting something larger than itself(Triceratops)?
Do you mean in your opinion Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus would not get as big as COPE and other even larger estimations of T-rex because they hunted smaller prey?
Or do you mean even if Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus specimens that were far larger than T-rex were to be found, there would always be T-rex as large as them because T-rex hunt Larger Prey?
if the last one is what you were trying to say then. I don't think that's the case. hunting larger animal doesn't mean it would be larger than animals that hunt smaller prey, its all in the Cost and Benefit.
Spinosaurus and Deinocheirus can comfortably use Far less energy to get far more Meat and Grass. they don't have to risk their life to eat their meals like others. Spinosaurus is like bears, Kodiac bear is only that big due to it doesn't have to risk its life as much and it can comfortably eat fish and get bigger and bigger. so is Deinocheirus.
they just have far more likely to attain size far quicker than others
@@timexyemerald6290I was tried so yea I was kind of confused about it
But I will explain
@@timexyemerald6290I was trying to say the last one but I appreciate the disagree I respect and plus ngl I forgot about the Kodiak bear
My favourite dinosaurs have to be the carcharodontosaurids. There’s just so many huge species, I find them so fascinating.
Why?
@@kimnorth7060 We don’t particularly have any huge land predators that exist today, and even in the past 60+ million years we haven’t had anything that even compares to carnivorous megatheropods.The fact there were so many enormous dinosaurs from one family and the fact they dominated their niches for so long is just something I find super interesting. There’s a lot of questions we still have about megatheropods and I think many of the answers lie somewhere in the carcharodontosauridae family.
@@adminbob_ why the carchardbotosauride and not tyranosauride?
And why do you think they have the answers?
@@kimnorth7060 Of course tyrannosauridae is interesting and there’s a lot of knowledge we can gain from them, but the family as a whole isn’t as large physically as the carcharodontosauridae. Even more so than that, the biggest of them, T-rex, has many very complete skeletons and while i’m sure there’s much more to learn about it, it’s also not so much of a mystery as it was in the past. Many of the carcharodontosaurids are only known from fragmentary remains and thus leave a lot more to be discovered. They seem to have set a very supreme standard for large carnivorous theropods and we still know relatively little about them compared to the aforementioned T-rex.
honestly i expect a charcharadontasaurid to be the largest considering how many of them pass the 6 ton mark
That would honestly make sense too
our sitting duckbear Platipus Spinoboi will be the one to win in the end. it knows how to live easy life, it doesn't work harder and knows to Work smarter 🗿🗿. it is a middle Child that just watches its Sibling fight for dominance in contempt. it knows its limits but never truly out of picture. It Slowly grinding fish For EXP. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
SA and NA battling for decades about who's got the biggest dog, and then all of a sudden they discover some 14 tonne Australian megatheropod. It would be very funny.
That's a good point your saying. Carcharodontosaurs are huge most of them are one of the largest land carnivore the world has ever seen
I have seen a real T rex skull and Carcharodontosaurus side by side. Carcharodontosaurus is definitely larger.
3 dinos were larger than t rex - carcharodontosaurus, spino and giga. T-rex fans use weight to try give it a fighting chance. Spino is obviously the largest, in terms of height and length, and possibly even weight.
Great stuff, and I appreciate your emphasis on clearing up a lot of the misconceptions surrounding the study. Also good point on the limit being less biomechanical and more ecological. Keep up the good work!
Thank you! Also I love your spec-evo stuff!
This was such a well-researched and put together video, It's so great to see one of those "size ranking" videos for dinosaurs that doesn't sensationalize or put down any concrete claims based on unreliable evidence, while still treating the dinosaurs like actual animals that lived in the context of their environment :) Excellent work!!
I would like to point out that the idea that T-Rex specimens have hit a sort of ceiling in terms of growth isn’t just baseless speculation. We have found numerous species of Megatheropod whose largest sizes have been around 13 meters long (Spino was longer, but weighed less). Having numerous species of Megatheropod dinosaurs over a span of like 90 million years of fossil record show that 13 meters is the biggest we know of is very good reason to believe they didn’t get much bigger than that. With Sauropods it’s a different story, as their body structure is perfectly designed to support colossal bodymass. In fact all land animals we know of to reach an excess of 15 tons in weight are Quadrapeds.
I mean we can’t definitively rule out that there were VENOMOUS Megatheropods either, but the entire paleontological context surrounding the topic makes it pretty clear that isn’t the case and that we will never find a 5 foot dinosaur skull with special grooves in its teeth or whatever. And if the entire surrounding field of paleontology shows no evidence that Theropod Dinosaurs reached the kind of sizes that this paper speculates with statistical comparison to a distantly related group of extant animals, that should be what we take to be the case. I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s literally impossible that such a creature ever existed, but it’s not something we should leave on the table. All this tells us is what could hypothetically, theoretically, possibly be found out there (except probably not, even the authors would say so).
Therefore we should believe that is not the case until evidence suggests otherwise.
It's an interesting hypothesis! There's so much we still don't know
There’s been a recent study suggesting all dinosaurs could have specimens a decent amount larger than the ones we have
I disagree, animals have a tendency to grow larger depending on what the current habitat/environment is. Humans for example have grown larger than our previous ancestors, just because we haven't discovered it yet doesn't mean it never happened.
@@tvvistedv3nom26 That is the case for basically all animals in the fossil record. It is statistically a fact that we haven’t found the largest T-Rex that ever lived, but that much larger?… Bipeds are have vastly different biomechanical challenges. Even at currently accepted sizes we were stumped for a while as to how T-Rex would even get up from the ground. Having to support over 15 tons on just two crooked legs is not a challenge easily overcome as it is, much less while engaging in a predatory lifestyle. Also I don’t know how a study would quantify such a suggestion. ”All”? Every single species? Even ones that like T-Rex face biomechanical circumstances entirely unique to itself due to size, bulk and bipedalism?
Sounds weird
@@user-oj6re6ju9t You’re making a generalized point for a specific case. If you were using this point to claim that we haven’t simply discovered the largest specimen of any one species, I’d agree. But you’re using it as an argument to support this specific case, which has literal tonnes of factors complicating things that I have already adressed. And you’re using it to justify the possibility of a T-Rex 70% larger than the current accepted size range based on fossil evidence. You could do this song and dance for any animal and funnily enough, T-Rex is one of the few animals that it’s the least applicable to, it being the most massive bipedal animal to ever live, bipedalism of course being one of the worst ways in the history of life to support gigantic bodymass, as virtually any biped can be matched to a quadraped that is a full order of magnitude larger than it. This is why Sauropods are the ones we should be thinking about this way and not Tyrannosaurs. We should not be assuming without good evidence that it’s even possible for a T-Rex to grow 70% larger than the largest known adult specimen in the fossil record. In fact for most animals in the fossil record BUT T-Rex we could be thinking this more justifiably.
There are actually three likely 12 meter + Mapusaurus specimens from the bonebed. Alongside 108.145 there was also 108.169 (incomplete maxilla bigger than that of the biggest Acrocanthosaurus specimen), 202 ( Fibula longer than that of the Giganotosaurus holotype).
All potentially huge! I hesitate to assign solid body lengths to a maxilla or fibula in isolation, since those elements can see a lot of variation in isolation, but whatever they belonged to were certainly big animals!
IIrc, using Random's recon of Mapusaurus, you can get 108.145 to 10.7 tonnes, which is insane! Still an awful specimen however, so I pray to god no one uses it in AvA's.
@@TheVividen Also Dr Coria had told me that all these three fossils belong to different specimens.
It will be used in ava soon u like it or not just like how we use E.D cope, Dentary Giga, Leviathan Sauro , Spinosaurinae indet in ava cuz they're big@@theskyis_black9074
Waiting for a video on Otodus megalodon with the Yellowstone Hyperpredator being featured.
I suppose we'll see if Apexzious ever comes back...
@@TheVividenyea, he’s disappeared off the face of the planet. However, other news on the Meg is in the works, so we should get something at the very least. Do you plan to make this sort of video for the largest known ancient marine macropredatory animals? It be really fun to watch.
Yeah with recent information it’s a great time. Really just a great year for palaeontology.
@@user-gv3si6in8rthat would be really fun!
Incredible job on this!
Thank you!
Top 10 largest theropod dinosaurs 2024
Weight= size ( biggest specimens)
1. Tyrannosaurus rex: 12.8m & 11.5t
2. Giganotosaurus: 13.6m & 10.4t
3. Mcraeencies: 12m & 9.2t
4. Spinosaurus: 14.7m & 8.3t
5. Saurophaganax: 13m & 8.3t
6. Carcharodontosaurus: 12.4m & 8.2t
7. Mapusaurus: 12.7m & 7.9t
8. Tyrannotitan: 11.7m & 7.4t
9. Deinocheirus: 11.7m & 7.1t
10. Acrocanthosaurus: 11.7m & 6.7t
Sauroniops is a highly controversial species and is still debated over its actual existence as a species, vividen doesnt put it on the list cause its a list of definite species and doesnt include dubious species
@@richie_0740It's Valid species, and it's 7,3-7,5 tons
although your speculation about spinosaurus and deinocheirus is based i can definitely see some random carcharodontosaur being the hypothetical largest theropod ever. Those theropods were evolved to take on colossal sauropods. In the evolutionary arms race where sauropods get bigger to repel more efficiently the menace of predators, charcarodontosaurs would inevitably grow larger and larger to kill those sauropods more effectively.
Unrelated but will you make a video about the small chinese tyrannosarid asityrannus xui discovered recently?
Vividen I’m holding out hope for that 20+ ton megaraptorid or carcharodontosaurid
A giant herbivorous megaraptoran would go hard
@@TheVividen the claws would make both deino and theri jelous
Actually is 7-8 tons, and it's Carcharodontosauridae
link ? where did you find that rumor?
@@timexyemerald6290 it’s from vividen himself
9:16 The Tibia is 12.3 meters long, and the Fibula 10.8 meters according to the figures. Now that would have been one scary T. rex right there lol
I like this guy's honesty of the uncertainty of the topic. A lot of others want to make concrete claims with our relatively limited data at the moment for many of these animals.
Suggestions for Theropod Paleoecology videos:
Morisson Formation
Kem Kem Group
Nemegt Formation
Huincul Formation if Meraxes and Mapusaurus were contemporaries.
Xiashaximao and Shishougu Formations
Wessex Formation
That’s definitely fascinating to think about. Do we know if meraxes and mapusaurus lived together. What a place that would have been if true. Mike from Prehistoric Magazine
Shouldnt forget that trex reached 11 tons hardly with over 40 specimens. Adult rex were 6-8 tons in 2015s based on stan. While other large carcharadontosaurids with 1-3 specimens reached 9-10 tons with ease. That means they gonna be lot larger if other specimens gets discovered. I do think carcharadontosaurids definilety gonna be bigger than any tyrannosaurid in general. Even comparing all tyrannosauird and carcharadontosaurids. Ends up most carcharadontosautid dinosaurs over 6 tons while only 3 tyrannosaurids reaches over 6 ton range. I mean mapusaurus giganotosaurus carcharadontosaurus tyrannotitan acrocanthosaurus. They bigger in averages already
i think in terms of bite. T.rex might win but in terms of size. T.rex is already on thin ice. T.rex fanbois just likes to ignore that.
Tyrannosaurids in general were still in the process of evolution and considering that tyrannosaurus itself as a species is composed of 8-10 tonnes individuals such as Stan, trix, samson, cope, sue, scotty and several others compared to the giga holotypes 8 ton mass, mapusaurs 6-8 ton mass, carcharodontosaurs 7-8 ton mass ect. Its not actually evidential to state that based off the fossil record given that these are externally unquantifiable inputs. You could have a larger than usual giganfound and we simply haven't found smaller ones. We could have found small rexes comparatively ect. T rex was still substantially larger on average at 8-9 tonnes compared to the others save the giga whom obtained max size estimates of around 7-8 tonnes
T.rex >>>>>>>>>>>>> Giganotosaurus
@@Mei23448 oh i remember you. Are there any plans of making video about Yellowstone Hyperpredator as Ancient shark to update on it ???
Gotta love how when they upscaled Giga to be about 500KG less heavy than scotty, wich was a reach, the T rex media was like "... oh yeah, scotty is old news, here is Cope, he was at least one ton over scotty, also the t rex could move at almost 30kmh and had a even more powerful bite than we ha previously estimated", and the reaction wa "AH FACK!"
T rex buffing itself just to spite everything else
"It gets huge and fat from fishing all day, it's mass fluctuating with the flow of prey" That was an intentional rhyme lol
The ONLY person on RUclips who pronounces "Giganotasaurus" correctly🤓👌👍
Scott, at about 10 tons, if even right, was a very old TRex at 30YO, with Sue being a close competitor at 29YO. They already were the big guys intheir environment (except for Alamosaurus if even on the menu).The only specimen of a Meraxes Gigas we have was 53YO, almost twice the age of Sue, when he died and barely reaching adulthood.
Here lies the problem. We know how big a T-Rex would be as he got too old to keep going, because of health and associated issues, but how old could a Carcharodontosaur get and then how Big, if all the stars allign, given it still was a midget compared to what possibly was in his main course?
I completely agree on the your Deinocheirus evaluation, and I could understand Deinocheirus needing a massive size to survive against predators like Tarbosaurus. I partly agree on your Spinosaurus conclusion. Now this is just complete speculation and what I think would make sense, but while Spinosaurus has plenty of food to get massive, I don't see why it would need that size, compared to, for example, Tyrannosaurus requiring it to be able to have a chance against the herbivorous giants in Hell Creek. But I completely understand a Spinosaurus getting fat on fish for the sake of it, and definitely believe it could happen. Great video as always!
While I love Tyrannosaurus, megatheropods and their sizes, seeing this speculative paper based on no real fossil evidence just doesn't really add anything for me to the animals, and I honestly fond it quite unnecessary. All it does is create misinformation that can get spread very easily, I can almost guarantee I will see a "Rex can get to 18 tonnes!" or "Giga can get to 17 tonnes!" comment in the near future.
The original reason I wanted to make this video was to address the claims surrounding that paper, actually. I do not want people throwing 15-ton rex around without the remains to support it, and you just know they're taking it out of context.
Also good point about Spino! It probably wouldn't have the same pressure for massive size as Tyrannosaurus, although perhaps one could investigate why Kodiak grizzlies are so large given their own diets.
@@TheVividen Indeed! I will definetly look into those bears.
Kodiak bears make a good comparison to Spinosaurus, but the bears also can eat vegetation ofcourse which means they have an even more abundant food source than just fish.
@@TheVividen How often do you think Spinosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus would come into contact with eachother, in terms of contending with eachother, my assumption is quite rarely?
@@Tyrannosaurus_rex. I mean, they could get that big to potentially scare away carcharodontosaurs or other animals to get themselves an even bigger territory to feed on ?
@@Tyrannosaurus_rex. i think Spinosaurus would just be getting Bigger purely based on competition among its own species. The larger you are, the more Part of the River is yours. the sail could have also aided in intimidating other spinosaurus too. you never know. I think it definitely had a reason for getting bigger since its already so big already.
why not more. our angry DinoDuck wouldn't mind for fish 🤣🤣
I've seen Scotty in person for a school field trip. I didn't realize we had the biggest Trex specimen.
Thankfully Tyrannosaurus rex has very complete fossils,thus it likely has the most accurate size predictions. Plus you can use T.rex to predict the size of its close relatives. Oddly, Tyrannosaurs aren’t closely related to most other megatheropods.
It's interesting how much of an outlier it is within its own family!
@@TheVividenThe big Coelurosauria most closely related to Tyrannosaurs maybe Megaraptors [which maybe big armed Tyrannosaurs]. Otherwise the nearest relatives of Tyrannosaurs are a bunch of birds and near-birds.
A famous paleontologist (can't remember the name) was presenting a lecture somewhere in Europe in 2004, about the Sue specimen and her potential awareness of being a super predator. It was an eye opening theory on potential and speculative psychology of animals long gone, and how those factors might've influenced the animal's further impact on its environment.
The paleontologist was then asked: "Well about the Scotty specimen?"
And the paleontologist answered: "Oh, Scotty? Scotty didn't know."
Vividen, I assume you’re a bit in the know about the Cope specimen… any idea when the paper/measurements are coming out? This year? Soon? Any information you can give, however vague, is greatly appreciated!
Hi! We should have 3D scans of the bones able to share this year. Hopefully within the next couple of months we'll have the skull recon and the femur, possibly the giant dorsal vert as well.
the 13 meter length estimate for saurophaganax is now considered to be outdated, more recent estimates put it at 34 feet maximum based on what we know
34 feet it's Loki specimen
@@Mr_Chubutensis huh?
@@t-man5196 Loki it's small Specimen Saurophaganax
The biggest it's Leviathan specimen
@@Mr_Chubutensis That one is so incomplete that theres no way to tell how big the animal was
Something I want to mention is that while volumetric modeling methods can be much more precise when determining mass, there’s still an element of artistic license that’s taken into account when restoring amounts of soft tissue and applying density values to each body segment. Sue, for example has been estimated between 8,000-10,000Kg+ using the same method, but has varying results based on how the experts reconstructed them. When it comes to specimens that are less complete such as Scotty, more artistic liberties need to be taken when restoration missing body parts, which widens the margin of error even further.
Great and very interesting video friend, I was a little surprised by your answer about the 2 largest potential theropods, however your logic makes sense, especially with deinocheirus. For a long time it seems to me that the ornithomimosauria family had great potential to develop such body plans. massive like the gigantic hadrosaurids, about spinosaurus the only thing that continues to baffle me is that pelvis and femur so reduced for such a long body, it makes me scratch my head until it bleeds, but well, sometimes nature is so surprisingly wise that no matter how logical they are, Let us always surprise us, as you clearly show in your example of the rhinoceros overturning and emerging unharmed as if it were a doll.
I'm a bit impatient to know more about Ed Cope, Bertha and Saurophanax and with a little good luck more osteological info about Giganotosaurus will come out. greetings from Mexico!
Surprised Acrocanthosaurs didn’t make the list, but good video and thought analysis
i think there is just too many Mega Theropods lately. that might be the case
The rhino example is interesting, and I wonder what those computer models are missing.
So the slim agile narrow skulled carch and giga are potentially bigger, but its more likely that the broad skulled more stocky powerhouse of a brute the tyrannosaurus rex would have more use in being bigger. Typically animals that rely on slicing and bleeding out their prey are slimmer and smaller, while the ones that rely on raw power are bigger with greater defense to compensate for lower agility.
Ah yes the mega therapods. Got a soft spot for allosaurids in general, but when it comes to megatherapods how can you not love them all equally?
I mean you have the giant death duck, the mega death stork/mega death merganser, the absolute powerhouse of ripping and tearing, the greatest lord of the lizard eaters (YES LAWD!) and a fairly large contimgent of arch skulled bone saw toothed bois with chins that you could pop the cap of a beer on.
Im anticipating new saurophaganax findings!!!
We may have been gathering average large Sauropods. Think about the larger individual.
I actually made an entire video about just that subject...
What you think about the niche "theory" that Saurophaganax was actually the very first giant carcharodontosaurid to ever exist?
Veterupristisaurus be like
Tyrannosaurus could have also potentially broke past the size limit just to overwhelm its prey though the spinosaurus and deinocheirus suggestions have merit
We may never know...
@TheVividen the killer duck is undeniably no1
@@kingofprehistory7851 Killer Duck is Jesus christ almighty. it walks on water and turn glass of wine into Fish
@@timexyemerald6290 YES
I could see either a Spino and deinocheirus for the reasons you give, as well a charcharadontasaurid ( either a known, or new) due to the species being normally large
Good video. Deinochirus seems to have a very vulnerable neck.
Was waiting for this video, This weight study was quite a read
Spinosaurus Argyptiacus will always be one of my favorites 💪🏻
Alright I’ll say it Saurophaganax Maximus killed me 😂😂😂
What's your favorite megatheropod?
Can't Decide 😅
Ok
Between Tyrannosaurus rex and Spinosaurus aegyptiacus
Ofcourse Meraxes gigas
Spinosaurus not just because of the size but just how weird it is. Plus the Kem Kem beds in general are weird. It’s also what I’m studying for my EPQ and what I wish to study when I get into palaeontology at university (a coincidence but still cool is that it’s the same university as N. Ibrahim)
Carcha >:]
Acrocanthosaurus atokensis is feeling sad
I love Acro! Unfortunately it was not in the same size category as the theropods covered in the video, but it's definitely a megatheropod.
Acrocanthosaurus is my fave too! 😊
@@TheVividengot here after you, we love Acro!
Giga underrated
Keenan Taylor's Tales of Kaimere features a fictional extinct tyrannosaur that formed a kind of symbiosis with a giant hadrosaur as a 'farmer', protecting the herd from intruders while hunting away from the nesting colonies.
Also a super spinosaur that could reach whale sizes
Just adding this: Allometric methods shouldn't be discounted. I used to think they weren't as precise as volumetric methods too, but femur-circumference estimates are backed up by physics and testing on modern animals. See Dr. James Napoli explaining it in this video (from the 25 minute mark onward): ruclips.net/video/GhULxhwMBJk/видео.html
Thanks, Luigi! I'll have to check that out
I love the human tendency to either destroy or hoard such fragile millenia year old fossils. Just imagine what information on these animals that we've lost due to terrible conflicts or the wrong people getting there hands on the remains (Many worse things have come from war, I'm just saying that this one is hard to stomach as well, at least for me).
Neat video, would love to see this unlikely upsize applied onto X-Rex the Edmontosaurus Annectens estimated at 18 tons and 50 ft long…
Aquatic creatures tend to be bigger than their terrestrial counterparts, by seeing how poorly we know about spionosaurids (especially spinosaurus) it's not far from reality to assume that a gigachad of spinosaurus exceeds 15 tons in mass :)
By the way do you have any recent size estimation of the brazilian giant theropod (Gomez)?
Gomez (assuming it was a theropod at all) could have been as small as 7 tonnes scaling from Allosaurus!
Now that's a reasonable estimate.
Predators tend to grow in accordance with the available prey right? Ecological arm's race and all that. I understand that carcharodontosaurs had a very different build and hunting method to tyrannosaurs but I just can't shake the feeling that the biggest land predator ever must have been a giant sauropod hunter like Mapu or Giga. Tyrannosaurus is such a ridiculous outlier in terms of mass compared to its closest relatives (notice how it's the only tyrannosaur on the list) so who's to say that there couldn't have been a massive carcharodontosaur outlier too? And in a family that regularly grows to 6-10 tonnes I wouldn't be shocked by a 15 tonne species
The problem with your theory is that Sauropod hunters like Carcharodontosaurus for example don't actively hunt for the adults. They instead prey on bite sized hatchlings or juveniles. So the tendency to get bigger to outcompete its competitors is impossible against Sauropods.
Yes, Spinosaurus lived the same time as the Carcharodontosaurus but with the current idea that Spinosaurus was more dominant to live on shores, how frequently did they encounter one and another to force an evolutionary arm's race?
Can you please cover how big was the original Spinosaurus discovered and that was destroyed?
Can you cover if it was really 18 meters long and if so how heavy was it really?
Ive heard 20 tones for 18m individual but could you cover if that would be true or nonesense?
(Edit thanks to some comments):
I want explanations not claims.
As far as ive heard the biggest individual was destroyed so I dont care much about the newer estimates based on the much smaller new found individuals.
And what I would want to know is wether the biggest discovered ones that were destroyed in the museums, actually were 18m long and if so how heavy would a 18m long individual be.
And if it would be possible to make some estimates based on the data we might have saved, like pictures or if we actually have some bones saved from said biggest individuals or any other data that is left of them.
You used outdate information
3 to 4 tons done
20 tonnes is nonsensical even if we accounted for a potential largest
@@Mr_ChubutensisI want explanations not claims.
As far as ive heard the biggest individual was destroyed so I dont care much about the newer estimates based on the much smaller found individuals.
And what I would want to know is wether the biggest discovered ones that were destroyed in the museums, actually were 18m long and if so how heavy would a 18m long individual be.
@@Christs_Apologet 18 meters is innacurate and outdate, new size is 14,5 meters
5 ton mapusaurus: 'yeah my airsacks are filled with helium.'
And yeah now Mapusaurus is 8,4 tons 💀
Hey Vividen! I love your content, especially how you dive deep into the nuances of paleontology. I was wondering if you could explore the idea that many species of pachycephalosaurids might actually represent different growth stages or morphs of the same species? I've heard some paleontologists suggest this, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on it in a future video. Keep up the amazing work!
I'm aware of the reclassification of Dracorex, Stygimoloch, and Pachycephalosaurus as potentially being the same species, but I'm curious if this concept could apply to other pachycephalosaurids as well. It would be fascinating to explore how widespread this might be within the group.
Kinda crazy to think that out of all megatheropods, one single individual was the biggest of them all, and it might’ve been a giant duck bear 😂
12:25 I would love to see a Dread Saurian or Beast from 20,000 fathoms level Rauisuchian!
Just fascinates me how huge they are, especially spinosaurus speaks to me
Paleontologists: "hey I found half of a hip. Time to make up a new dinosaur out of it." Very good video, I enjoyed it👍 I wish we could find more complete skeletons like rex or at least a whole skull
Bagger 293 and Overburden Conveyor Bridge F60 are 14000 tonne vehicles that help mine coal. They are both kinetic structures capable of movement. F60 is more than half a kilometer in length. I think the absolute hard biomechanical limits on organism size are probably closer to that sort of range than any actually evolved animal.
In my opinion, i think why Tarbo and Theri is not included is bc they're also holotypes and not really fully studied which means those specimens are not full grown specimens... Another of my opinion is that Tarbo might be able to reach 8 tonnes, Therizinosaurus might also reach 7.9 tonnes to 8.7 tonnes...
Reason behind Therizinosaurus & Tarbosaurus aren't in top 9
Therizinosaurus: 5.5 tonnes or 5,542 kgs
Tarbosaurus: 5.4 tonnes or 5,392 kgs
@@monsterzero521 bc they're also holotype skeletons and fragments like I said, the scientists do not know what those real creatures would look like if he fossils are complete so you have a point too.!
@@monsterzero521 they would be included yet since we don't know much of them, the scientists did not even speculate or had announced if the Tarbo and theri were fully grown specimen skeletons...
@@niquisshadelasada162 we don't know much about any giant theropods except for the T rex. So that applies to Giganotosaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, Tyrannotitan which are in the top 9
@@monsterzero521 yes
I love the way you explained how we don't actually know what we think we know about these creatures and all we can do is speculate as to their size and how they looked.
MY CONCLUSION: THE ONLY WAY TO TRULY KNOW IS TO RESURRECT THEM, DAMN THE SCIENTIFIC CONSEQUENCES! 😂
To share my opinion, I don’t think that a 18 ton racks is impossible, keep in mind that we found a Saurophaganax that was double the size it was supposed to be, although it wouldn’t be the average I wouldn’t write out the possibility entirely that a Tyrannosaurus could get that back.
*That big, speech to text went screwy. But if there was any mega theropod that would get that size, my money is on the Tyrannosaur
The assumption that volumetric methods are inherently more precise than femur allometry is not generally agreed upon by the literature. Benson and Campeone are some of the leading experts on dinosaur metabolism, growth, and histology, and they consistently use long bone measurements based on the tight correlation between these measurements and the mass of modern animals. The heavily pneumatic tissues of saurischians complicate volumetric calculations and rely more heavily on assumptions of respiratory volume and soft tissue reconstruction that can’t be robustly demonstrated.
Iam still supporting my boy spinosaurus for being the largest although it would be easier if some of these specimens weren't sold under the black market that way we can get some definitive answers.
still salty about the rumor about 2.5 meter skull rumor ? if it was proven true. it would definitely be phenomenal. well. they seems to have the means to it
Elephant looks way to small in this picture, considering it overlaps in weight with many of these dinosaurs.
Some of these genuinely look they could be 2x the weight.
Great video!
I’m surprised that we were underestimating the toughness of animals. I thought from the commonly accepted info that rex just had brittle bones, but it’s possible that they’re just less dense now after fossilisation. It’s nice to know that rex is fairly accurately portrayed as a tank
That recent paper makes me wonder if we could do the same thing for Dunkleosteus. It would be pretty difficult considering that there are no more arthrodires and that all modern fish are either more derived (eugnathstomes) or less derived (hagfish and lampreys), but it'd be interesting to try.
Maybe the biggest therapod ever will be a genetically modified bird for some messed up freak show in the far future
It's obviously Ultraspinotitan Deusmaximus a 100 to 200 ton Ultra Theropod.
Real
Actually Mapusaurus is 8,4 tons and 12,7 meters by Lamborlobator, Sauroniops is 7,5 tons and 12,6 meters
Deinocheirus is unique among ornithomimosaurians bc it had very long front legs, they look unique tho
I swear by 2028 the weight estimate for T.rex will be 20 thousand kilograms. It just keeps getting heavyer every year.
Any news about the Big Bertha Rex specimen yet, Vividen?
I'm finally seeing a different kind of predator on my home page
Tbh, the 15 metric tonnes result we got from the paper doesn’t sound that crazy when you consider the fact that Scotty had a good chance at weighing over 10 tonnes himself. That’s absolutely gargantuan and ultra rare of course, but 1 in 2.5 billion rare?
Now, a 17 to 18-tonne Rex on the other hand,….. yeah, I could see there being only one of that. And that old fucker was probably lethargic as hell.
now add in one of those hormonal disorder where it makes them grow far larger. now that would have made a monster that would make scientists and archeologists question their reality.
Wait till we get a carnotaurus specimen the size of dinosaurs and it’s really 15 meters 🙏🏾 (I’m delusional and manifesting)
it would be tallest of them all due to its body proportion being shorter in term of body length
tyrannosaurus is so sick
i don'tk now why i laughed so much at the 20 ton postosuchus
Amazing, I personally think that it's quite plausible for Megatheropods to reach sizes much larger than the largest individuals found. Many people should realize that the study applies to all Theropods and that it's the theoretical maximum size. Additionally, estimates can vary, so the maximum size can really vary, and some specimens are fragmentary, making them much more complicated to estimate size. I will point out the fact that Tyrannosaurus Rex is an Archosaur so using other Archosaurs is quite accurate, but using alligators is not the best example since they are not as closely related. Tyrannosaurus Rex probably had a lot or a good amount of individual variation and sexual dimorphism, since many Tyrannosaurus Rex specimens have anatomical differences. So using alligators is not the best method since alligators have a lot of individual variation and size variation, and Tyrannosaurus Rex individual variation and size variation is still being debated on. Using modern Dinosaurs, the birds, is much more effective since Tyrannosaurus Rex is much more related to Maniraptorans. The study was amazing either way, credits to the authors. I really like the way you discuss the study carefully with precision and include all the pieces of information in a amazing way. Amazing, keep up the good work.
So you believe out of the millions and millions of T-Rex that lived, we have found basically the biggest possible in the 80 or so specimens we have found? Right
A total of 2.5 billion T. Rexes had lived over the course of 2.5 million years. The unfortunate part is that fossilization is extremely rare, and specimens that were fossilized have yet to be unearthed.
I have a feeling that dinosaurs are the kind of thing that we think we know shit, but if we actually could see them, we would have our minds blown away.
7:30 -GIGAchad song-
Paleowolf has some great stuff. I'm glad he let me use his music!
We would freak if we saw how much blood would be scattered in a big fight from some of those monsters. Gross!
Megatherapods are my favorite type of fish, along with primeape.
4:37 male african elephants are quite a bit larger than that size representation
so there is talk of the game the isle adding the spino the first thing that came to my mid is what the babies would look like, and how would the spine develope,id be intrested in what you think
I agree with you it might honestly be between Dinocheirus and spino
MEET THE MEGA THEROPODS!
*TF2 theme starts playing*
also noo not my boy spino, so small in the diagram D:
For me I would go with either Spino or the Giga