Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · 5m

I just wanted to put some content to my feed here, and push myself back to more active and productive in the palaeosphere again. My older post on dinosaur taxonomic diversity just came to mind, and it went from there.

And someone has to say it out here, might as well be me.

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · 21h

The arguments put forward to lumping Nanotyrannus with T. rex had so far not to my knowledge covered osteohistology of the holotype skull and entirely relied on morphological traits.

If the type skull truly was mature with an EFS, it then obviously cannot be a juvenile ontogenic stage of anything.

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · 21h

And now more recently last year at SVP, Nanotyrannus, which had been strongly considered a synonym of T. rex, shaped up to be likely distinct.

Keystone to the position of synonymy was the apparent lack of adults for the former. However the type skull's hyoids showed indications of maturity.

SVP 2024 abstract, title and authors
Christopher et al., 2024, "Assessing the ontogenic maturity of the Nanotyrannus lancensis holotype with hyoid osteohistology"

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · 21h

Nearly six years ago, I wrote a blog post on how many dinosaur species probably existed in the Mesozoic.

thesauropodomorphlair.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/h...

It had also led me to be much less trusting of taken-for-granted species-level taxonomic lumping. We had even overlumped modern birds.

How many Mesozoic dinosaur species were there?

How many dinosaur species where there? More precisely, how many dinosaur species from the Mesozoic Era were there? This specifier excludes the Cenozoic forms (which are all birds), as they generall…

thesauropodomorphlair.wordpress.com

1 2 3

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · 2d

I've seen too many people claim that Argentinosaurus-grade titanosaurs had already reached the limit, and dismissing estimated 100+ t supersauropods entirely on the grounds of being 'too big'.

All based on nothing but headcanons based on personal incredulity and not on any quantitative methods.

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · 2d

The biomechanical limits for how large land animals could theoretically function at are very likely far higher than most people imagine it to be.

Hokkannen (1985) calculates it at the order 100-1000 t.
www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/hokkane...

www.miketaylor.org.uk

1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · 18d

As much as I'd like definitive evidence for extraterrestrial civilisations out there, we are very much nowhere near ready to make contact with one.

Different ethnicities, sexualities, neurodivergence, etc. had already been enough to turn humanity against itself. How about life not even from Earth?

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · 27d

A piece of wisdom to live by: If you do not wish people to celebrate your death, it's easy.

Just don't be a terrible person in life. That's it. It costs nothing. As far as we know we only have this one life; DON'T use it to harm innocent people.

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · Aug 18

For how much of the tail this is, up to 51 caudal positions are known from the animal overall (Wedel & Taylor 2013) and the full tail in life might have had as much as 60 or so. (Díez Díaz et al. 2020)

Tail reconstruction modified from Gunnar Bivens with first 18 caudals shaded blue.

2

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · Aug 18

Estimated range of motion for the tail (first 18 caudals) of Giraffatitan brancai, Díez Díaz et al. 2025.

doi.org/10.1098/rsos...

Maximum estimated range of motion angles for Giraffatitan's first 18 caudals

1 2 10

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · Aug 3

The est. population of bee hummingbirds is about 22,000-66,000 mature individuals based on this source: datazone.birdlife.org/species/fact...

Average adult masses of ~2.6 g for females and ~2 g for males. Even taking the high end of the population est. gives less than 200 kg for the total.

Bee Hummingbird Mellisuga Helenae Species Factsheet | BirdLife DataZone

People are destroying and consuming nature at a devastating rate. Birds are our early warning system. BirdLife International is the largest international Partnership for nature conservation.

datazone.birdlife.org

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · Aug 2

Something mind-blowing regarding theropods in my head: a single adult individual of Giganotosaurus - the holotype specimen - would have been far more massive in life than entire current estimated population of the smallest theropod known (bee hummingbirds).

1 3

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 15

This chart is one I remember well from my childhood years. I still really wonder how they can somehow come to the idea that Pachycephalosaurus was an animal comparable to or larger than a Tyrannosaurus.

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 10

The new Dempsey et al. publication estimates the body mass of NCSM 14345 at about on par with AMNH 5027. And here's their answer to the question: why did the giant carcharodontosaurids have such slim femora compared to similarly-sized or even much smaller tyrannosaurs?

1 2

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 10

In regards to measurements, MUCPv-Ch1 has a 136.5 cm femur, an est. skull length of 163.4 cm (replicating Canale et al. 2022), and the mounted sacrum is 109.2 cm long (Coria & Currie 2016). MOR 1125/B-rex has a femur 115 cm long and a skull 123 cm long (Persons et al. 2019, Paul 2022).

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 10

Except for the fact that the Giganotosaurus type and B-rex have absolutely no business being placed on par or even close in terms of sheer mass with each other. Here's my reconstruction of the G. carolinii type compared with B-rex, represented by a modified Black Beauty from GetAwayTrike.

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 10

And it's not just Acrocanthosaurus either. The much larger Giganotosaurus type has a femoral circumference of 52 cm, which when compared to those of tyrannosaurs puts it at slightly over that of B-rex (51.5 cm). FC regression would place the two at approx. similar est. masses (Persons et al. 2019).

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 10

Meanwhile, volumetric mass estimation results in, for even an emaciated NCSM 14345 to the point of having bits of bone sticking out of its skin, masses of more than 5.5 t. (Bates et al. 2009). And the est. specific gravity for the model was ~0.914 - Larramendi, Paul, & Hsu (2020) suggests 0.95-0.99.

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 10

Giant carcharodontosaurids for the most part have been estimated at rather low masses for their skeletal frames due to their narrower femoral shafts. Carpenter (2000) based on femoral shaft circumference estimates A. atokensis NCSM 14345 at 2.4 t, and Persons et al. 2019 arrives at ~3.6 t.

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 10

A recent publication by Dempsey et al. in regards to dinosaur masses, body shapes, and their implications. Based on the estimated centre of mass from their models, giant carcharodontosaurids (e.g. Acrocanthosaurus) would have had more erect, columnar legs than tyrannosaurs.

doi.org/10.1111/brv....

1 3

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 5

www.wildgorillasafaris.com/how-strong-i...
kabiragorillasafaris.com/gorilla-stre...

This is absurd. This is equivalent to a slightly larger than average bull hippopotamus or an adult white rhino. So they mean to tell me that an animal averaging less than 250 kg can lift those? Really?

Gorilla Strength: How Strong is a Gorilla/Silverback Gorilla?

How Strong is a Gorilla? Are you wondering how strong is a Silverback Gorilla? Well, A fully grown silverbacks can lift 4,000 lb (1,810 kg) on a bench press.

www.wildgorillasafaris.com

1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · May 5

I find that gorillas tend to have their strength overblown by pop-sci media to the point of absurdity more than pretty much any other animal. There are websites claiming that gorillas can somehow lift 1810 kg(!!!), which definitely does not pass the sniff test. At all.

1 1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · Apr 16

I particularly like Greg Paul's depiction of such a hunt.

1

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · Apr 16

I think a lot of people tend to, at least subconsciously, put the animals face to face in a Roman colosseum or so as if they were gladiators. In such a scenario I imagine that a Tyrannosaurus would indeed most likely be disadvantaged. But predators of course normally don't hunt like that.

2

SpinoInWonderland @spinoinwonderland.bsky.social · Jan 16

And as for the giant theropods, Tyrannosaurus and Giganotosaurus were inferred by Barrick & Showers (1999) to have had metabolic rates equivalent to mammalian carnivores approximately ~13% or so of their body masses.
doi.org/10.26879/99012

2.2 Giganotosaurs and Tyrannosaurus

Themophysiology and Biology of Giganotosaurs: Comparison with Tyrannosaurus

doi.org

1