[ Argentinosaurus, a giant sauropod, illustrated by Chase Stone. ]
"Of all the animals ever to have roamed the planet, the iconic long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as sauropods stand unrivaled. No other terrestrial creatures have come close to attaining their colossal sizes. They overshadowed all other dinosaurs, from the duck-billed hadrosaurs and the horned ceratopsians to the armored ankylosaurs and predatory tyrannosaurs. Even the mightiest land mammals—mammoths and rhinoceroslike beasts that were up to twice as heavy as the largest elephants alive today—were featherweights compared with the biggest sauropods.
From an evolutionary perspective, this singularity makes sauropods an intriguing anomaly. Evolution is rampant with examples of convergence, in which the same feature evolves more than once independently in different groups of organisms. A classic example of convergence is powered flight—flapping wings evolved in birds, bats, pterosaurs and insects, but the particular bones or other structures making up the wings differ among the groups, attesting to their independent evolutionary origins. Convergence in evolution is very common even when it comes to complicated features: warm-bloodedness, eyes that can move and focus, bipedal locomotion, the loss of limbs, the use of tools, and live birth all evolved multiple times in different animal groups. Convergence is widespread in the plant kingdom as well: carnivorous plants evolved at least a dozen times, roots evolved more than once, and even arborescence—plants taking the form of trees—evolved more than once. With convergence so common in nature, sauropods' uniqueness in size is special in itself. No other land animal has approached even a third of the largest sauropods' weight. What makes sauropods stand out from the crowd, both literally and figuratively?"
Read more: "How Sauropod Dinosaurs Became the Biggest Land Animals Again and Again" by Michael D. D'Emic.
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Results from todays flocking paleostream
First we had Altispinax, which I had to speed run eating to finish this little baby
Then, to the dismay of some, we did thyreosaurus which was my idea, whith some curious Spicomellus approaching. Also I would like to clarify that I am not a lazy bastard as I suffered with everyone
Then I did a newborn ornithoprion with zebra shark colors
Then we did mapusaurus and here he is cuddling with argentinosaurus as they are tired of fighting
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Patagotitan wouldn't even notice a bee hummingbird sitting on its head. I'm crying now.
No it would not!
I once did the math.
you can fit 40,000,000 bee hummingbirds in a single Patagotitan/Argentinosaurus.
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A Pair of giganotosauruses have a small picnic whilst in the middle of a fern prairie on a cloudy, foggy day. The sauropods in the background flee after watching their relative get both invited to lunch and then become said lunch.
(Drawn for a friend of mine)
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National Fossil: Argentina
For “season 2“ we‘re moving to South America, more precisely to Argentina, which has lots of fossils to offer.
Once again, you get to vote on which one should represent the nation. As always, it could be a fossil that is just exceptionally well preserved and beautiful, had a huge impact on paleontology and our knowledge of the past, is very common/representative of the area, is beloved and famous in the public eye, is just a very unique and interesting find, or has any other justification.
Here are the options:
Argentinosaurus: The first contestant is one of the biggest land animals of all time with a length of more than 30 m and a weight of 80 t or more. It‘s also very fittingly named after the country.
Carnotaurus: Next up is the carnivorous dinosaur Carnotaurus. Only one skeleton has ever been found, but it was so well preserved, that Carnotaurus still is one of the best understood theropod dinosaurs of the Southern hemisphere. It‘s a fan favorite movie star, with roles ranging from the dorky dancer of Prehistoric Planet all the way to the main villain of Dinsey‘s Dinosaur (Art by Fred Wierum)
Eoraptor: while Argentina has some of the biggest dinosaurs ever to offer, it is also well known for some of the earliest ones. The small Triassic Eoraptor and some of its Argentinian cousins are very important for our understanding of the evolution of dinosaurs as a whole
Kelenken: One of my favorite groups of South American animals are the terror birds, giant predatory flightless birds that make it very clear that birds are in fact dinosaurs. The biggest one of them was 3 m tall Kelenken, known from some leg bones and the skull. It lived during the Miocene about 15 million years ago (Art by Julio Lacerda)
Argentavis: If one giant Miocene bird is not enough for you, Argentina also offers you Argentavis. While it maybe wasn‘t the biggest flying bird in terms of wingspan, it most likely was the heaviest one (more than 70 kg; for comparison, the heaviest flying bird today weighs about 20 kg) (Art by Fabio Alejandro)
Fasolasuchus: If you‘re really not a fan of dinosaurs (including birds), maybe I can interest you in the crocodile-site of the Archosaur family tree: Fasolasuchus was an distantly-related triassic cousin of our modern crocodiles and it was the biggest terrestrial predator of its time; the only carnivores to ever surpass it were the biggest theropod dinosaurs
Arctotherium: South America is home to many bizarre mammals, but most of them I want to reserve for other countries. Still, here is one mammal option for y‘all: Arctotherium, the giant short-faced bear. The biggest species of them lived in Argentina and they were probably the biggest bear ever (maybe up to 1500 kg and more). (Illustration by Soibelzon, Schubert 2011)
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Jurassic June day 12: Argento!
"You might think that having an entire mountain on your back would cause some back pain... and you'd be right. Argento can't afford to miss his chiropractor appointments every other Thursday."
Genus: Argentinosaurus
Time: Late Cretaceous, 96-92 mya
Discovered: Argentina
Length: 35m (115 ft)
Diet: Herbivore
Today's my birthday so I drew my favorite vivosaur :)
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