Meraxes is a genus of carcharodontosaur known from the huincul formation.

it caught attention for numerous things,one was its size. the original paper estimated it at 10 meters in length. But later arguably more rigorous estimation gave the holotype a bigger size. Randomdinos with his talent scaled the holotype at 11.1 m in length. donald henderson in a rigorous study,estimated meraxes as big as 11.6 m in length.

however this is not the biggest specimen. a second specimen was announced a couple years ago and is stated to be 15 percent larger than the holotype linearly. Now the most reliable estimates for the holotype are as stated earlier are 11.1-11.6 m in length. Being 15 % larger than that linearly gives a body length for this specimen of 12.8-13.3m. this puts the larger specimen on a par with if not exceeding the largest giganotosaurus specimen.

the largest giga specimen is a single jawbone and jawbones can vary in size within the same specimen. in stan both the dentaries have an 8 percent size difference. the giant giga dentary is larger than the holotype by 8 percent. so is it truly bigger?

meanwhile the larger meraxes specimens are apparently weightbearing postcranial bones,which make for a much,MUCH,stronger case of gigantism,because weight bearing better constrains size.

this is all preliminary mind,having been reported in abstract. take it with some salt. but its exciting noetheless.

https://bicyt.conicet.gov.ar/fichas/produccion/13018612

https://doi.org/10.1007%2Fs00114-023-01832-1

https://www.deviantart.com/draco300/art/Meraxes-gigas-1138562167

We know for a fact dinosaurs most likely had all kinds of morphs and mutations. In your opinion what would be the craziest animal and morph to see upclose?

A two headed Argentinosaurus is probably outshining the leucistic Trex by a small margin imo.

What are your thoughts?

People judging papers by a paleontologists reputation not by the papers merits: what I mean is I see people say “well I'm going to be skeptical of this” when a paper is published and it comes from a paleontologist that might be controversial.

Not all paleontologists are idealistic. Many paleontologists have a tendency to rush their publications through. Some do this for ego, some do this to better secure more grant funding. It was of course something committed by OC marsh and Edward cope during their infamous bone wars in order to one up each other. Others have doubted paleontologists work just because of personal conduct of them such as malfeasance against students or inputting their personal opinion into lecturing.

I can kind of understand this. I think for a lot of paleontology enthusiasts who aren't actual paleontologists or PhD students, the In-N-Outs of data, studying fossils, the publication process and everything else is so vast and difficult to comprehend. So for a lot of people it's simpler to just go with the mindset of “oh well this paleontologist has come to some crap conclusions several times their whole bibliography must be untrustworthy.”

But this is not the right way to think. In paleontology you must judge a paper and it's conclusions on a case-by-case basis. Just because a paleontologist has rushed to conclusions sometimes or a few or if they have made some retrospective errors or if they occasionally have bad science, does not automatically guarantee that the conclusion of their paper is unreliable. In mertonian laws that guide the perception of science,they dictate that the validity of scientific data and conclusions must be decoupled from the human being who produced them.

For example I will use Nicholas longrich. Anybody on this sub knows who he is. He's a bully who bullied his students and lost grant money for that. When someone claimed his fossil was a forgery,published a paper about that and then longrich published a paper proving his fossils were real through scans, he could have just lived and let go. He was accused of forgery and he proved himself right,he won the public debate. But instead he demanded a retraction of the paper. An example of him trying to silence people that disagree with him.

And he's had his fair share of poor conclusions and bad science to say the least. He's well known for naming taxa off very fragmentary remains. He names three different genuses of hadrosaur from the same formation Morocco based off the same kind of scant skull material. He named a troodontid based off a single skull roof. He named a new species of labocania even though the type species is fragmentary uncertain and dubious and the actual remains he described were hardly enough to name anything off of. He insists that Warhammer the nanotyrannus (dueling dinosaurs specimen) instead is a stygivenator, a completely dubious tyrannosaur for which there's no reliable holotype.

And yet despite this his work is not all automatically invalid. Coahuilasaurus was named after a partial but exquisitely well-preserved skull that's almost life-like in preservation, even partial skulls are highly informative and can be enough to diagnose from. He has named several mosasaurs from Morocco like pluridens and thalassotitan, which are actually known from pretty good material. His paper on hatchling Tyrannosaurs was comprehensive and widely accepted within the community.

What am I trying to say with all this? You have to judge each paper on a case-by-case basis. Even with someone like Longrich, who has a laundry list of personal and scientific issues, still has many reliable and acceptable conclusions in his papers. A person's bibliography is not a monolith and for the reasons I displayed earlier must be judged on a case-by-case basis.

Another thing to point out is that even terrible paleontologists like Nick and others still tend to publish their papers in peer-reviewed journals. Peer reviewed journals, well not infallible and invincible, still help keep a degree of reliability and consensus with the papers published, unless the results are explicitly overturn.

In cases like this look at the paper, judge it by the merit and quality of the data and science within it, and have a mix of skepticism or acceptance. Science is made to be disputed and improved upon. When you look at the authors of the paper, look at the paper itself and judge it by its own merits.

There can be some exceptions to this of course. Papers which don't even have a genuine peer reviewed process are a prime example. I am looking at you MS malkani and Spencer Lucas.

I was thinking hard about Dinosauria, haha, and I know it's just a youtube series, but I'm gonna be honest, the last 3 episodes have hit a point where I enjoy the series more than actual documentaries.

I'll start with "The Dinosaurs" - Hated it and it was full of misinformation. I don't know what else to say, I definitely enjoy Dinosauria more than The Dinosaurs, and I feel like it's actually more accurate. That gets me to my point -

Is Dinosauria even less accurate than Dinosaur documentaries? In particular, is it less accurate than ones that try to be sensational like "The Dinosaurs"?

I think what I'd like, everyone list like Dinosauria alongside your top 4 Paleo documentaries, and rank them from most accurate to least accurate, lol

My List :

1. Prehistoric Planet
2. Dinosauria
3. Walking with Dinosaurs (99)
4. Dinosaur Planet
5. Walking with Monsters

The latter 3 are also mostly less accurate as they are old I admit, however, I'd also also possibly rank the more recent Walking with Dinosaurs and The Dinosaurs as less paleo accurate than Dinosauria maybe.

Been diving deep into the Permian extinction lately and I keep coming back to Gorgonopsids. These things dominated Earth for over 50 million years — saber teeth, semi-warm-blooded, direct ancestors of every mammal alive today including us.

Then 252 million years ago, in what geologists think may have taken less than 60,000 years, the Great Dying wiped out 96% of all marine species and 70% of land vertebrates. Siberian volcanic eruptions, ocean acidification, temperatures spiking 10°C.

Gorgonopsids didn’t make it through. Not a single species survived.

Meanwhile we have entire Marvel franchises about dinosaurs that went extinct 185 million years later. The Permian extinction was objectively more catastrophic and almost nobody talks about it.

What prehistoric era do you think is most underrated?

The hunted prepares to strike.

He is the horned avenger of the grasslands.

Unicorion.

Shedding the timid passivity and fragile defense of ordinary grazing herds for an unyielding, territorial code of honor, this stoic ungulate is an engine of pure, deliberate violence built to turn the tables on The Brush's hypercarnivores. Armed with a massive, skewering cranial horn, bone-shattering hooves, and the tactical discipline of a seasoned gladiator, it is a relentless, one-horned menace to any predator that mistakes its diet for weakness.

Read about the One-horned duelist now.

Découvert dans la formation de Jehol en Chine, un squelette presque complet dévoila Kayrasaurus, un nouveau thérizinosaure géant mesurant environ 1,6 fois la taille des autres membres de sa famille trouvés dans cet écosystème. Équipé des griffes impressionnantes caractéristiques de son groupe et d'une mâchoire pourvue de 77 minuscules dents, ce théropode herbivore aux allures d'"ours à plumes" démontre une adaptation alimentaire unique et prouve qu'une diversité de tailles bien plus grande qu'imaginée régnait parmi les herbivores du Crétacé inférieur.

Voici la source dont provient cette information.

Hello everyone,

For the past few decades, mainstream paleontology has relied heavily on strict shrink-wrapping digital software to estimate the body mass of giant sauropods, locking Bruhathkayosaurus into a "safe" box of 110–130 tonnes [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains]. But from a biomechanical and geometric perspective, these numbers represent a desiccated skeletal frame rather than a living organism [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains].

I would like to introduce the Dynamic Mass Paradigm, which applies solid physics, cubic volume scaling, and seasonal lipid dynamics to prehistoric leviathans [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains].

Here is why the current software-driven consensus is mathematically trapped:

1. The Blue Whale Baseline vs. Soft Tissue Reality

• Real-world data from modern biological inspections shows that an average adult blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) measuring 20–22 meters weighs between 50–80 tonnes. Only rare, hyper-fat Antarctic females hit the historical 143–145t mark .

• Yet, when critics apply their most restrictive, shrink-wrapped software to a 52-meter Bruhathkayosaurus, the computer is forced by three-dimensional geometry to output a minimum of 77–80 tonnes of dry skeletal weight [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains]!

• Conclusion: Even a completely emaciated, flat-box digital "mummy" of this titanosaur is heavier than or equal to a living, fully-fed average blue whale [ Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains].

1. Biomechanical Load and Bone Material Science

• Standard software ignores the required multi-chambered GI tract volume and seasonal hyperphagia (fat accumulation necessary for survival before droughts) [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains]. Returning a true organic carbon density (~1 g/cm³) elevates a 52m adult to a baseline of 300+ tonnes in daily life [A key feature contributed to sauropods getting so enormous, new dino foot study reveals, Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains].

• To support this, structural engineering shows that a titanosaur femur with a mid-shaft diameter of ~40 cm was structurally capable of handling up to 600 tonnes of static compression load [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains].

• To prevent sinking, these animals utilized specialized, hydraulically spreading foot-skis (Plantaradix elatopedis) up to 1,5–1, 7meters wide to distribute weight safely across plains [A key feature contributed to sauropods getting so enormous, new dino foot study reveals, Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains].

1. The Macroenvironmental Paradigm Shift

If we apply this exact biological framework to other severely downsized extinct species, the numbers correct themselves across the board [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains]:

• Basilosaurus: Shrunk by software to 5t [Basilosaurus - Wikipedia]. True dynamic mass indicates 50–80t average [Basilosaurus - Wikipedia].

It is time to admit that early digital shrink-wrapping has become an outdated dogma [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains]. The laws of physics, cubic volume, and material science do not change to fit conservative software [Body mass estimate of Bruhathkayosaurus and other fragmentary sauropod remains].

I would love to hear your thoughts on these scaling metrics. Let's discuss!

Edit: Apparently there was a leak about this Brazilian Spinosaurid a year ago... which was taken down due to the embargo. Well, who knows when this thing is coming out but either way I'll be very excited.

Can't believe this hasn't gotten more traction, probably because it's hidden in 4 hour long video by Main Characters on YouTube posted 6 days ago. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYfiLMH2Lf8&t=7699s

The section, titled "Searching for Spinosaurus Relatives in Brazil," begins with explaining the holotype of Oxalaia. Sereno explains that a Brazilian museum reached out to obtain a cast of the holotype since the original burned in a fire.

During this process, a Brazilian paleontologist asked to look at Sereno's Spinosaurus material. As a thank you, they asked Sereno and his team to examine some bones found in the Amazon around 10 years ago. The area in which they were found is the flood plain of a river, in which the banks are fully submerged for a specific time of the year and only revealed at a later time. Sereno and his post-doc examine the bones, piecing it together as the left side of an animal. Sereno organized a trip back to the site utilizing rubber rafts, and found even more of the skeleton.

Allegedly, the specimen is an ancestral member of the Spinosaurids, what Sereno described as "the perfect predecessor," possessing a sail which was not as tall as Spinosaurus but nonetheless prominent. The theory is that Spinosaurids originally developed in what is now South America, specifically Brazil, and this ancestor (or an animal like it) migrated to Africa whilst the waterway between the two continents was still small and navigable. This ancestor would eventually develop into the Spinosaurus we know today. Sereno also says they found more of Oxalaia, which would inform the overall look of the animal and potentially seperate it further from Spinosaurus as a distinct species. This would help his theory that an ancestral animal developed in Brazil, and then travelled and diversified in Africa, resulting in two distinct lineages of Spinosaurids developed on both continents (that being Oxalaia and Spinosaurus).

The most exciting part of this interview is that Sereno mentions they will be going back in September, when the river has receded and the banks' rocks are exposed, to find more of the animal before publishing. Being October, one can be confident Sereno has gone back to the Amazon and uncovered even more of this new species, and one can expect a description sometime in the future. Just amazing stuff.