This was inspired by an email Mike sent a couple of days ago:
Remind yourself of the awesomeness of Giraffatitan:
https://svpow.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/mike-by-jango-elbow.jpegNow think of this. Its neck is 8.5m long. Knock of one measly meter — for example, by removing one vertebra from the middle of the neck — and you have 7.5 m.
Supersaurus’s neck was probably TWICE that long.
Holy poo.
I replied that I was indeed freaked out, and that it had given me an idea for a post, which you are now reading. I didn’t have a Giraffatitan that was sufficiently distortion-free, so I used my old trusty Brachiosaurus. The vertebra you see there next to Mike and next to the neck of Brachiosaurus is BYU 9024, the longest vertebra that has ever been found from anything, ever.
Regarding the neck length of Supersaurus, and how BYU 9024 came to be referred to Supersaurus, here’s the relevant chunk of my dissertation (Wedel 2007: pp. 208-209):
Supersaurus is without question the longest-necked animal with preserved cervical material. Jim Jensen recovered a single cervical vertebra of Supersaurus from Dry Mesa Quarry in western Colorado. The vertebra, BYU 9024, was originally referred to “Ultrasauros”. Later, both the cervical and the holotype dorsal of “Ultrasauros” were shown to belong to a diplodocid, and they were separately referred to Supersaurus by Jensen (1987) and Curtice et al. (1996), respectively.
BYU 9024 has a centrum length of 1378 mm, and a functional length of 1203 mm (Figure 4-3). At 1400 mm, the longest vertebra of Sauroposeidon is marginally longer in total length [see this post for a visual comparison]. However, that length includes the prezygapophyses, which overhang the condyle, and which are missing from BYU 9024. The centrum length of the largest Sauroposeidon vertebra is about 1250 mm, and the functional length is 1190 mm. BYU 9024 therefore has the largest centrum length and functional length of any vertebra that has ever been discovered for any animal. Furthermore, the Supersaurus vertebra is much larger than the Sauroposeidon vertebrae in diameter, and it is a much more massive element overall.
Neck length estimates for Supersaurus vary depending on the taxon chosen for comparison and the serial position assumed for BYU 9024. The vertebra shares many similarities with Barosaurus that are not found in other diplodocines, including a proportionally long centrum, dual posterior centrodiapophyseal laminae, a low neural spine, and ventrolateral flanges that connect to the parapophyses (and thus might be considered posterior centroparapophyseal laminae, similar to those of Sauroposeidon). The neural spine of BYU 9024 is very low and only very slightly bifurcated at its apex. In these characters, it is most similar to C9 of Barosaurus. However, theproportions of the centrum of BYU 9024 are more similar to those of C14 of Barosaurus, which is the longest vertebra of the neck in AMNH 6341. BYU 9024 is 1.6 times as long as C14 of AMNH 6341 and 1.9 times as long as C9. If it was built like that of Barosaurus, the neck of Supersaurus was at least 13.7 meters (44.8 feet) long, and may have been as long as 16.2 meters (53.2 feet).
Based on new material from Wyoming, Lovelace et al. (2005 [published as Lovelace et al. 2008]) noted potential synapomorphies shared by Supersaurus and Apatosaurus. BYU 9024 does not closely resemble any of the cervical vertebrae of Apatosaurus. Instead of trying to assign its serial position based on morphology, I conservatively assume that it is the longest vertebra in the series if it is from an Apatosaurus-like neck. At 2.7 times longer than C11 of CM 3018, BYU 9024 implies an Apatosaurus-like neck about 13.3 meters
(43.6 feet) long.
Bonus comparo: BYU 9024 vs USNM 10865, the mounted Diplodocus longus at the Smithsonian, modified from Gilmore 1932 (plate 6). For this I scaled BYU 9024 against the 1.6-meter femur of this specimen.
If you’d like to gaze upon BYU 9024 without distraction, or put it into a composite of your own, here you go:
References
- Gilmore, C. W. 1932. On a newly mounted skeleton of Diplodocus in the United States National Museum. Proceedings of the United States National Museum 81, 1-21.
- Lovelace, David M., Scott A. Hartman and William R. Wahl. 2008. Morphology of a specimen of Supersaurus (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) from the Morrison Formation of Wyoming, and a re-evaluation of diplodocid phylogeny. Arquivos do Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, 65 (4): 527-544.
- Wedel, M.J. 2007. Postcranial pneumaticity in dinosaurs and the origin of the avian lung. PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Integrative Biology, 303 pp.
Dry Mesa Brachiosaurus cervical in dorsal view
June 8, 2014
This is BYU 12867–you’ve seen it here before–in dorsal view. It’s not a brilliant shot–I took it through the glass of the display case while filming a documentary at the North American Museum of Ancient Life in Lehi, Utah, in 2008. Centrum length is 94 cm, total length with the overhanging prezygapophyses is over a meter.
How much is our intuition about sauropod mass worth?
June 5, 2014
As promised, some thoughts on the various new brachiosaur mass estimates in recent papers and blog-posts.
Back in 2008, when I did the GDI of Giraffatitan and Brachiosaurus for my 2009 paper on those genera, I came out with estimates of 28688 and 23337 kg respectively. At the time I said to Matt that I was suspicious of those numbers because they seemed too low. He rightly told me to shut up and put my actual results in the paper.
More recently, Benson et al. (2014) used limb-bone measurements to estimate the masses of the same individuals as 56000 and 34000 kg. When Ian Corfe mentioned this in a comment, my immediate reaction was to be sceptical: “I’m amazed that the two more recent papers have got such high estimates for brachiosaurs, which have the most gracile humeri of all sauropods“.
So evidently I have a pretty strong intuition that Brachiosaurus massed somewhere in the region of 35000 kg and Giraffatitan around 30000 kg. But why? Where does that intuition come from?
I can only assume that my strongly held ideas are based only on what I’d heard before. Back when I did my 2008 estimate, I probably had in mind things like Paul’s (1998) estimate of 35000 kg for Brachiosaurus, and Christiansen’s (1997:67) estimate of 37400 for Giraffatitan. Whereas by the time the Benson et al. paper came out I’d managed to persuade myself that my own much lower estimates were right. In other words, I think my sauropod-mass intuition is based mostly on sheer mental inertia, and so should be ignored.
I’m guessing I should ignore your intuitions about sauropod masses, too.
References
- Benson Roger B. J., Nicolás E. Campione, Matthew T. Carrano, Philip D. Mannion, Corwin Sullivan, Paul Upchurch, and David C. Evans. (2014) Rates of Dinosaur Body Mass Evolution Indicate 170 Million Years of Sustained Ecological Innovation on the Avian Stem Lineage. PLoS Biology 12(5):e1001853. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001853
- Christiansen, Per. 1997. Locomotion in sauropod dinosaurs. Gaia 14:45-75.
- Paul, Gregory S. 1998. Terramegathermy and Cope’s Rule in the land of titans. Modern Geology 23:179-217.
- Taylor, Michael P. 2009. A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(3):787-806.
In recent photo posts on the mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton and its bones in the ground, I’ve lamented that the Field Museum’s online photo archive is so unhelpful: for example, if it has a search facility, I’ve not been able to find it.
But the good news is that there’s a Field Museum Photo Archives tumblr. Its coverage is of course spotty, but it gives us at least some chance of finding useful brachiosaur images. Like this one of the sixth presacral vertebra (i.e. probably D7 in a column of 12 dorsals):
It’s instructive to compare that with Riggs’s (1904: plate LXXII) illustration of the same vertebra in the same aspect, in which he almost literally airbrushed out the jigsaw-puzzle complexity of the preserved bone surface:
More disturbing still, compare that old photograph with my own (terrible) 2005 photo of the same vertebra:
It looks very much as though the vertebra itself — not just Riggs’s illustration — has been “improved” since the older photo was taken exactly a century earlier in 1905. This is a constant problem when dealing with old fossils.
Here are three more interesting photos from the Tumblr. First, the Brachiosaurus fossils in the field:
This is evidently from later in the excavation process than the previous photo of this area, since much of the material is now jacketed. That’s the femur in front of shot, here seen in anteromedial view, with the top towards the right.
Next up, this photo purports to be “Thirteen men including Security Guard unloading dorsal vertebrae of type specimen Brachiosaurus fossil”:
But in fact it’s not Brachiosaurus — the neural spines are too tall and slender. I am pretty sure this is Riggs’s Apatosaurus — the rightmost dorsal has that distinctive notch on the dorsal aspect of the neural spine. And indeed, checking his monograph on that specimen (Riggs 1903: plate XLVI), I see that its dorsals were distorted in this way, and that the front-centre vert is a fine match for its D10.
Finally, there’s this one of the prep room:
On the far left, we have the still-jacketed Brachiosaurus femur; next to it stands Harold W. Menke, who discovered the fossil; and to his right is Elmer S. Riggs, who wrote the description.
Those are all the Brachiosaurus-related images I’ve been able to find on the tumblr. But do let me know if you find any others.
References
- Riggs, Elmer S. 1903. Structure and relationships of opisthocoelian dinosaurs. Part I: Apatosaurus Marsh. Field Columbian Museum, Geological Series 2:165-196.
- Riggs, Elmer S. 1904. Structure and relationships of opisthocoelian dinosaurs. Part II, the Brachiosauridae. Field Columbian Museum, Geological Series 2:229-247.
Brachiosaurus altithorax, fossils in the field
June 3, 2014
Continuing our Brachiosaurus series [part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7], here is another historically important photo scanned from the Glut encyclopaedia: this time, from Supplement 1 (2000), page 157.
This is the Brachiosaurus altithorax holotype FMNH P25107 in the field, at Grand Junction, Colorado, in 1900. Clearly visible are the seven presacral vertebrae running across the middle of the photo (upside-down, so we see their ventral surfaces), several ribs on either side, and the end of a long-bone to the left — most likely the distal end of the femur. The flat bone at bottom left is probably part of the ilium, with the circular cut-out being the acetabulum. (The caption also mentions the sacrum, which I can’t see.)
As with the photo of the mounted skeleton in the museum, this is one of the Field Museum’s own photos — neg. #4027 — but I can’t find a better copy online. It’s got to be out there somewhere — can anyone help?
References
Glut, Donald F. 2000. Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia: Supplement 1. McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina. 442 pages.
I’m currently writing a popular guide to dinosaurs, to be published by Random House next autumn [Ed.: available now at amazon.com and at amazon.co.uk]. I’ve been writing about [Brachiosaurus and Giraffatitan], and have read your 2009 study vindicating the proposal to separate them into two genera.[…]I know you consider Brachiosaurus likely to have been bigger (and note that the specimen was not fully grown), with a longer trunk and tail – but most of the sources I can find give both animals the same body length, generally around 26m. Presumably this doesn’t reflect your work, and your calculations are different.
I replied at the time, and said that I’d post that response here on SV-POW!. But one thing and another prevented me from getting around to it, and I forgot all about it until recently. Since we’re currently in a sequence of Brachiosaurus-themed posts [part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6], this seems like a good time to fix that. So here is my response, fresh from November 2011, lightly edited.
Well, Giraffatitan has only been recognised as a separate animal at all in the last couple of years, and nearly everything that has been written about “Brachiosaurus“, at least in the technical literature, is actually about Giraffatitan. So existing sources that give the same length for both are probably not making a meaningful distinction between the two animals.
First, on Giraffatitan: Janensch (1950b:102) did a great job of measuring his composite mounted skeleton. His figure for the total length of Giraffatitan along the neural canal is 22.46 m, and is certainly the best estimate in the literature for an actual brachiosaur specimen (and quite possibly the best for any sauropod).
I don’t know where the figure of 26 m comes from, but as Janensch (1961:213) notes, the isolated fibula XV2 of Giraffatitan in the Berlin collection is 134 cm long, compared with 119 cm for that of the mounted skeleton. This is 1.126 times as long, which if scaled isometrically would yield a total length of 25.29 m. So that is defensible, but 26 m is not, really.
I would advise sticking with Janensch’s published figure of 22.46 m, as it’s based on good material, and also because it forms the basis of my comparative estimate for a Brachiosaurus of similar limb length.
Now in my 2009 paper I estimated with reasonable rigour that the torso of Brachiosaurus was probably about 23% longer than that of Giraffatitan, yielding 4.82 m rather than 3.92 that Janensch gave for Giraffatitan. On much less solid evidence, I tentatively estimated that the tail of Brachiosaurus might have been 20-25% longer than that of Giraffatitan. Given the paucity of evidence I would play safer by going with the lower end of that estimate, which would give a tail length of 9.14 m compared with Janensch’s 7.62 for Giraffatitan. Riggs (1904) tells us that the sacrum of Brachiosaurus is 0.95 m long, which is slightly less than 1.07 m for Giraffatitan. Finally, since we know nothing of the head and neck of Brachiosaurus, the null hypothesis has to be that they were similar in proportion to those of Giraffatitan.
Putting it all together, Brachiosaurus may have been longer in the torso by 0.9 m, and in the tail by 1.52 m, but shorter in the sacrum by 0.12 m — for a total additional length of 2.3 m. That would make Brachiosaurus 24.76 m long, which is 10% longer than Giraffatitan.
Note that all the Brachiosaurus figures are given with much greater precision than the sparse data we have really allows. I think you could round Janensch’s 22.46 m for Giraffatitan to 22.5 and be pretty confident in that number, but you shouldn’t really say anything more precise than “maybe about 25 m” for Brachiosaurus.
Finally, you correctly note that the Brachiosaurus specimen was not fully grown — we can tell because its coracoid was not fused to the scapula. But the same is true of the mounted Giraffatitan, so these two very similarly sized animals were both subadult. How much bigger did they get? We know from the fibula that Giraffatitan got at least 12-13% bigger than the well-known specimen, and I’d be pretty happy guessing the same about Brachiosaurus. And I wouldn’t rule out much bigger specimens, either.
References
- Janensch, Werner. 1950b. Die Skelettrekonstruktion von Brachiosaurus brancai. Palaeontographica (Supplement 7) 3:97-103, and plates VI-VIII. [English translation]
- Janensch, Werner. 1961. Die Gliedmaszen und Gliedmaszengurtel der Sauropoden der Tendaguru-Schichten. Palaeontographica, suppl. 7 (1), teil 3, lief. 4:177-235.
- Taylor, Michael P. 2009. A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(3):787-806.
Here is the wonderful Brachiosaurus altithorax mount in its original location, in the main hall of the Field Museum in Chicago. (Click through for full resolution.)
I scanned this from Don Glut’s Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia, page 215. There must be better quality versions somewhere, because this is one of the Field Museum’s own photos — negative #GN 86962 — but I can’t find it in their singularly unhelpful online photo archive.
I’m posting it because there’s an astonishing lack photos of this mount on the Internet. As I noted last time, I was only able to find this striking image:
The Brachiosaurus mount in its original position in the main hall of the Field Museum. I can’t find a higher resolution version of this photo — can anyone help?
at the miserably low resolution shown here (358×248). More generally, almost every photo of a mounted Brachiosaurus out there seems to be from either the picnic area outside the museum, or O’Hare Airport. If anyone’s able to find decent-resolution examples of this skeleton indoors, please do drop the links into a comment.
I mentioned this to Matt, and he commented:
I think that the mount got moved outside just a bare handful of years before digital cameras went from rare to ubiquitous. If the move had happened even five years later, I’ll bet there would be loads of photos of the old mount.
I’m sure he’s right. But someone must have half-decent photos from back then?
Seriously — is this tiny photo the best photographic record we have?
Of course, the real question is: why did they shove the Brachiosaurus outside? It was mounted in 1994, and taken down again in 1999, so this marvellous mount — by any objective standard the single most awesome exhibit in the museum’s history — was only actually in residence for five paltry years.
The standard explanation is that it was removed “to make space for” Sue, the vulgar overstudied theropod. But a glance at the photo above shows that there was plenty of space to put in half a dozen T. rexes without needing to move the brachiosaur. I can only assume that someone realised having a brachiosaur next door would make Sue look feeble. It’s a tragedy.
Update
Thanks to Dean for finding this one: small, but beautiful.
References
Glut, Donald F. 1997. Dinosaurs: The Encyclopedia. McFarland & Company, Inc., Jefferson, North Carolina. 1076 pages.
After P.A.S.T president Gilles Danis commented on our post about the Chicago airport Brachiosaurus mount, I got into an interesting email conversation with him. Here, posted with his kind permission and only lightly edited, are his thoughts on the Brachiosaurus mount.
Brachiosaurus mount at Chicago O’Hare Airport, terminal one. Pelvis in ventral view, anterior to the left.
Gilles writes:
The story of this mount (s) is chequered. The casts of real material include the sacrum, the caudal, a number of dorsals, some rib fragments, one femur, a very badly eroded humerus and a coracoid. [Update: also the right ilium, as Gilles subsequently confirmed by email.]
On the mount that was in the museum and later was moved to the airport, we had a peculiar situation to deal with. Because museums like to have people walking under the rib cage of high sauropods, this becomes a safety hazard for two reasons. The first is that it cannot be allowed to fall on the people (obviously) and even though the cast was of light plastic, the engineers insisted in overbuilding the support (namely the legs and arms). Also because while in the Field Museum, it stood in the path of a fire exit, we had to have a certain amount of distance between the front and hind limbs (I forget the exact measurement). The only way that we could achieve that was to add two vertebrae for a total of 12 dorsals. We chose to duplicate two of real vertebrae at the lower end of the dorsal section.
The Brachiosaurus mount in its original position in the main hall of the Field Museum. I can’t find a higher resolution version of this photo — can anyone help?
The funny thing is only one person figured that one out and that was Bill Simpson the collections manager. Also to support this structure, we were asked to used way oversized steel in the limbs which meant that we had to “inflate” the real humerus and femur to accommodate the material. This is why the cast is so bad; it is half stuffing.
It is interested to see how a lie perpetuates itself. The following year, the Hayashibara museum ordered a mount of the same skeleton and they were very interested in getting the distance between the feet and manus. So we, again, had to make a Brachiosaurus limoensis.
Not satisfied with this silly situation, Disney came to us in 1996 and ordered that very same skeleton again with the stretch limo factor for another dinosaur that you walk under for the Wild Animal Kingdom park in Orlando. Up to that point, only Bill Simpson had realized the error. But I had just had it up to there with these stretch dinosaurs and revealed the problem. After that, in 1999, we replaced the skeleton in Stanley Field Hall with one on the terrace to make room for Sue the T. rex. On this Brachiosaurus, we have the normal 10 dorsals. The last Brachiosaurus we mounted is in the North American Museum of Ancient Life (N.A.M.A.L.) at Thanksgiving Point, Lehi, Utah, again a normal skeleton.
If this was not enough we restored Seismosaurus halli (now Diplodocus hallorum). This project was sponsored by a Japanese company who was to get the first mount. They took Gillette’s publication and read that the skeleton would have been 150′ long or 50 meters. We soon realized that there was a mistake, that the tail was not missing a huge section but had simply drifted away from the sacrum and the skeleton would not be even close to the predicted length. The Japanese would have none of it. After months of negotiations, we arrived at a compromise and we made the skeleton 40 meters long, 133’+ by adding some whiplash vertebrae until it was that long. By then I had had enough and threw in the towel but not before mounting another Seismosaurus for the museum is Albuquerque which is correct.
As for the Berlin brachiosaur: I spent some time in Berlin measuring, photographing and drawing (Donna Sloan did the drawing) the original material there, but they would not allow us to mould it. What I found interesting is that in 1992 when I was there, most of the skeleton of the mount was not original but it was not cast either. It was sculpted wood.
I have many more tails (pun, ha,ha) about sauropods. I should write them down sometime.
Many thanks to Gilles for allowing us to reproduce this important information.
Gilles’ list of real material that was cast for the mount includes very nearly all of the holotype FMNH P25107 — assuming that “a number of dorsals” means seven, the number that Riggs excavated and had prepared. The only fossil elements not apparently appearing are the fragmentary first caudal and the right ilium. But it seems to me from some of my photos of the airport mount (see the image at the top) that a cast of the right ilium was used. [Update: yes, Gilles confirmed by email that the right ilium was indeed cast from real material.]
Regarding the number of dorsal vertebrae: it may have been circumstances that forced P.A.S.T to give the mount 12 dorsals, but Migeod’s pre-description of the NHM’s Tendaguru brachiosaur gives good reason to think this is likely the correct count.
Similarly, although the torso was therefore longer than Gilles had intended, it might have ended up correct, as careful comparison of the lengths of the Brachiosaurus and Giraffatitan dorsals suggests that the torso of the former was about 23% longer.
To my shame, I’d not realised that the Brachiosaurus at the airport has two more dorsals than the one in the Field Museum picnic area, despite Matt having posted a ventral-view photo of the airport mount that clearly shows the twelve dorsals and a lateral-view photo of the museum mount that clearly shows ten.
When Gilles says “most of the skeleton of the [Berlin] mount was not original but it was not cast either”, I assume he’s referring to the presacral vertebrae, which as Janensch explained in his 1950 paper about that mount were too heavy and fragile to mount. The sculptures in Janensch’s mount were not particularly good, but they have been replaced by much better ones in the remount.
How slender were the humeri of Giraffatitan?
May 23, 2014
Continuing with what seems to have turned out to be Brachiosaur Humerus Week here on SV-POW! (part 1, part 2, part 3), let’s consider the oft-stated idea that brachiosaurs have the most slender humeri of any sauropod. For example, Taylor (2009:796) wrote that:
Discarding a single outlier, the ratio of proximodistal length to minimum transverse width (Gracility Index or GI) in humeri of B. brancai [i.e. Giraffatitan] varies between 7.86 for the right humerus HMN F2 and 9.19 for the left humerus HMN J12, with the type specimen’s right humerus scoring 8.69, slightly more gracile than the middle of the range […] For the B. altithorax type specimen, the GI is 8.50, based on the length of 204 cm and the minimum transverse width of 24 cm reported by Riggs (1904:241). However, the B. altithorax humerus looks rather less gracile to the naked eye than that of B. brancai, and careful measurement from Riggs’s plate LXXIV yields a GI of 7.12, indicating that the true value of the minimum transverse width is closer to 28.5 cm. As noted by Riggs (1903:300-301), the surface of the distal end of this humerus has flaked away in the process of weathering. Careful comparison of the humeral proportions with those of other sauropods (Taylor and Wedel, in prep.) indicates that the missing portion of this bone would have extended approximately a further 12 cm, extending the total length to 216 cm and so increasing the GI to 7.53 – still less gracile than any B. brancai humerus except the outlier, but more gracile than any other sauropod species except Lusotitan atalaiensis (8.91), and much more gracile than the humerus of any non-brachiosaurid sauropod (e.g., Diplodocus Marsh, 1878 sp., 6.76; Malawisaurus dixeyi Jacobs, Winkler, Downs and Gomani, 1993, 6.20; Mamenchisaurus constructus Young, 1958, 5.54; Camarasaurus supremus Cope, 1877, 5.12; Opisthocoelicaudia skarzynskii Borsuk-Bialynicka, 1977, 5.00 – see Taylor and Wedel, in prep.)
Implicit in this (though not spelled out, I admit) is that the humeri of brachiosaurs are slender proportional to their femora. So let’s take a look at the humerus and femur of Giraffatitan, as illustrated in Janensch’s beautiful 1961 monograph of the limbs and girdles of Tendaguru sauropods:
The first thing you’ll notice is that the humerus is way longer than the femur. That’s because Janensch’s Beilage A illustrates the right humerus of SII (now properly known as MB R.2181) while his Beilage J illustrates the right femur of the rather smaller referred individual St 291. He did this because the right femur of SII was never recovered and the left femur was broken, missing a section in the middle that had to be reconstructed in plaster.
(What’s a Beilage? It’s a German word that seems to literally mean something like “supplement”, but in Janensch’s paper it means a plate (full-page illustration) that occurs in the main body of the text, as opposed to the more traditional plates that come at the end, and which are numbered from XV to XXIII.)
How long would the intact SII femur have been? Janensch (1950b:99) wrote “Since the shaft of the right femur is missing for the most part, it was restored to a length of 196 cm, calculated from other finds” (translation by Gerhard Maier). Janensch confused the left and right femora here, but assuming his length estimate is good, we can upscale his illustration of St 291 so that it’s to SII scale, and matches the humerus. Here’s how that looks:
Much more reasonable! The humerus is still a little longer, as we’d expect, but not disturbingly so.
Measuring from this image, the midshaft widths of the femur and humerus are 315 and 207 pixels respectively, corresponding to absolute transverse widths of 353 and 232 mm — so the femur is broader by a factor of 1.52. That’s why I expressed surprise on learning that Benson et al (2014) gave Giraffatitan a CF:CH ratio (circumference of femur to circumference of humerus) of only 1.12.
Anyone who would like to see every published view of the humeri and femora of these beasts is referred to Taylor (2009:fig. 5). In fact, here it is — go crazy.
Taylor (2009: figure 5). Right limb bones of Brachiosaurus altithorax and Brachiosaurus brancai, equally scaled. A–C, humerus of B. altithorax holotype FMNH P 25107; D–F, femur of same; G–K, humerus of B. brancai paralectotype HMN SII; L–P, femur of B. brancai referred specimen HMN St 291, scaled to size of restored femur of HMN SII as estimated by Janensch (1950b:99). A, D, G, L, proximal; B, E, H, M, anterior; C, K, P, posterior; J, O, medial; F, I, N, distal. A, B, D, E modified from Riggs (1904:pl. LXXIV); C modified from Riggs (1904:fig. 1); F modified from Riggs (1903:fig. 7); G–K modified from Janensch (1961:Beilage A); L–P modified from Janensch (1961:Beilage J). Scale bar equals 50 cm.
Notice that the femur of Giraffatitan, while transversely pretty broad, is freakishly narrow anteroposteriorly. The same is true of the femur of Brachiosaurus, although it’s never been shown in a published paper — I observed it in the mounted casts in Chicago.
Weird.
Calculations
So let’s take a wild stab at recalculating the mass of Giraffatitan using the Benson et al. formula. First, measuring the midshaft transverse:anteroposterior widths of the long bones gives eccentricity ratios of 2.39 for the femur and 1.54 for the humerus (I am not including the anterior prejection of the deltopectoral crest in the anteroposterior width of the humerus) . Dividing the absolute transverse widths above by these ratios gives us anteroposterior widths of 148 for the femur and 150 mm for the humerus. So they are almost exactly the same in this dimension.
If we simplify by treating these bones as elliptical in cross section, we can approximate their midshaft circumference. It turns out that the formula for the circumference is incredibly complicated and involves summing an infinite series:
But since we’re hand-waving so much anyway, we can use the approximation C = 2π sqrt((a²+b²)/2). where a and b are the major and minor radii (not diameters). For the femur, these measurements are 176 and 74 mm, so C = 848 mm; and for the humerus, 116 and 75 mm yields 614 mm. (This compares with FC=730 and HC=654 in the data-set of Benson et al., so we have found the femur to be bigger and the humerus smaller than they did.)
So the CF:CH ratio is 1.38 — rather a lot more than the 1.12 reported by Benson et al. (Of course, if they measured the actual bones rather than messing about with illustrations, then their numbers are better than mine!)
And so to the mass formula, which Campione and Evans (2012) gave as their equation 2:
log BM = 2.754 log (CH+CF) − 1.097
Which I understand to use base-10 logs, circumferences measured in millimeters, and yield a mass in grams, though Campione and Evans are shockingly cavalier about this. CH+CF is 1462; log(1462) = 3.165. That gives us a log BM of 7.619, so BM = 41,616,453 g = 41,616 kg.
Comparison with Benson et al. (2014)
| SV-POW! | Benson et al. | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Femur | Humerus | Femur | Humerus | |
| Transverse diameter | 353 | 232 | 240 | |
| Transverse radius | 176 | 116 | 120 | |
| Anteroposterior diameter | 148 | 150 | 146 | |
| Anteroposterior radius | 74 | 75 | 73 | |
| Circumference | 848 | 614 | 730 | 654 |
| Total circumference | 1462 | 1384 | ||
| Mass estimate (kg) | 41,616 | 34,000 | ||
My new mass estimate of 41,616 kg is is a lot more than the 34,000 kg found by Benson et al. This seems to be mostly attributable to the much broader femur in my measurement: by contrast, the humerus measurements are very similar (varying by about 3% for both diameters). That leaves me wondering whether Benson et al. just looked at a different femur — or perhaps used St 291 without scaling it to SII size. Hopefully one of the authors will pass by and comment.
More to come on this mass estimate real soon!
References
- Campione, Nicolás E, and David C. Evans. 2012. A universal scaling relationship between body mass and proximal limb bone dimensions in quadrupedal terrestrial tetrapods. BMC Biology 10:1–21. doi:10.1186/1741-7007-10-60
- Benson Roger B. J., Nicolás E. Campione, Matthew T. Carrano, Philip D. Mannion, Corwin Sullivan, Paul Upchurch, and David C. Evans. (2014) Rates of Dinosaur Body Mass Evolution Indicate 170 Million Years of Sustained Ecological Innovation on the Avian Stem Lineage. PLoS Biology 12(5):e1001853. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1001853
- Janensch, Werner. 1950b. Die Skelettrekonstruktion von Brachiosaurus brancai. Palaeontographica (Supplement 7) 3:97-103, and plates VI-VIII.
- Janensch, Werner. 1961. Die Gliedmaszen und Gliedmaszengurtel der Sauropoden der Tendaguru-Schichten. Palaeontographica, suppl. 7 (1), teil 3, lief. 4:177-235.
- Taylor, Michael P. 2009. A re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 29(3):787-806.
- Taylor and Wedel, in prep. Hmm, I wonder where that’s got to? Matt, we really ought to warm this up and get it done. Why, yes I am using the bibliography of a blog-post to communicate with a co-author, thanks for asking.
Last time we looked at the humeri in the Field Museum’s mounted Brachiosaurus skeleton — especially the right humerus, which is a cast from the holotype, while the left is a sculpture. But Matt’s and my photos of that mount are all pretty much useless scientifically — partly because we were terrible photographers back then, but also partly because the very light background of sky tended to put the skeleton into silhouette and lose a lot of detail.
But fortunately there’s another Brachiosaurus in Chicago!
(We’ve featured this mount once before.)
This in fact the original Brachiosaurus mount that was erected in the Field Museum’s main hall in 1993. When a certain vulgar, over-studied theropod was installed in that hall in 2000, the surprising decision was made to remove the Brachiosaurus to “make room” for it (even though it’s objectively tiny). The mount was not built to be exposed to the elements, so it couldn’t just be moved outdoors. Instead, a new one was made from more suitable materials for the picnic area, and the original mount was moved to O’Hare Airport.
[Aside: what the heck were the museum thinking when they booted Brachiosaurus out of the main hall? However much you love T. rex, and I admit I do, Sue makes a feeble centrepiece compared with a brachiosaur. I can only assume there was some subtle political motivation for reducing their main hall’s Awesome Quotient so dramatically. The poor thing was only there seven years.]
Anyway, the original mount is now at Terminal 1 at O’Hare Airport, where it can be photographed less inadequately than outdoors. Here are those contrasting humeri again: the real cast on the right side of the animal (left side of photo) and the sculpture on the left (right side of photo):
And a zoom into the relevant section:
As it happens, I flew into a different terminal at O’Hare. But I knew that this mount was in Terminal 1, so before I get the transit to my hotel, I dragged my luggage across to Terminal 1 and begged the ticket clerk to let me through into the departure area so I could look at it. I don’t now remember exactly what the sequence of events was, but I do recall that phone-calls were made and supervisors were consulted. In the end, someone on staff gave me a platform ticket, and I was able to go and spend a quality hour with this glorious object.
It also meant I got to watch nearly every single traveller amble straight past Brachiosaurus giving it literally not even a single glance — see the first photo for an example. Truly depressing.
Anyway, I was able to get some slightly better photos of this cast humerus than I subsequently got of the outdoor mount. Though not very many, because — stop me if you’ve heard this — I was young and stupid then.
Anyway, here is the humerus in anterior view. Or as close to anterior as I could manage. By holding the camera above my head, I could get it nearly level with the distal margin of the mounted bone, so what we have here is really more like anterodistal:
And here is that some bone in lateral view (again, really laterodistal). From this angle, you can really see how shapeless parts of the lateral border of the cast are — which is odd, because there are sharp lips on the actual fossil.
In terms of general appreciation of the bone, this next one, in anterolaterodistal view, is probably best — the light caught it in an informative way. Unfortunately, I cut off the distal margin. Sorry.
As you can see, the level of detail in the cast is mostly pretty good. For example, you can clearly make out the broken-off base of the deltopectoral crest (the tall light-coloured oval about a quarter of the way down and a third of the way across the bone). That makes the lumpenness of the distal part of the lateral aspect all the more mysterious.
Finally, here are both humeri, more or less from the left, so that the real cast is in something approaching medial view.
From this angle, you can see that the humerus is noticeably less anteroposteriorly deep than its transverse width. We’ll see this theme cropping up again with brachiosaur limb bones — stay tuned for future posts!
Also of interest: the very nice sculpted humerus on the left side has a complete deltopectoral crest — modelled, I imagine, after those of the various Giraffatitan humeri. It also has a finished distal end which is much broader than that of the cast humerus. In this, it’s probably right, as the real bone suffered from some decay.
And that, I am afraid, is all: stupidly, I neglected to photograph the humerus in posterior aspect, or any of the diagonals other than anterolateral.
Next time: exciting news about the relative breadth of humerus and femur in brachiosaurs!
Sauropod Vertebra Picture of the Week 
