The camera adds 10 tonnes...
The largest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world towers over visitors in the central hall of Berlin’s Museum of Natural History. It belongs to Giraffatitan
, an animal formerly known as Brachiosaurus (the big one from the opening act of Jurassic Park). From the bones, we can tell how long and tall Giraffatitan was, but how much did it weigh? The dinosaur’s flesh has long decayed, but Bill Sellers
from the University of Manchester has developed a new way of reconstructing its physique and estimating its weight. By laser-scanning the skeleton, and wrapping skin around its virtual bones, he calculated that this particular Giraffatitan weighs in at a hefty 23,200 kilograms, or 23.2 tonnes. And no matter what the university’s press office would like you to believe (more on this later), that’s virtually identical to the best current estimates. There are two typical approaches for ...
