Small Length Increase Means Big Weight Gain For T.rex?

*sigh* really?

Those are the mounted casts of those two specimens. They are not the original fossils, and have been elongated. Most mounted skeletons are...

Sue at 9 tons? That's a bit on the ridiculous side. In the study i believe you got that estimate from, they placed unbalanced tissue, a bit too much of it..Here's a model:

They made Sue overly fat!! how can you argue otherwise?

Also, can you provide evidence(other then this ridiculous study) citing Tyrannosaurus at any more then 7 tons?

So despite only a length increase of 2 ft or so, T.rex can gain nearly 2 tons in weight!

That's wild speculation, individual weights vary animal to animal!.Can you show that this is evident in related taxa? for example...Daspletosaurus or Tarbosaurus? if so, that would make more sense. For just one species though....highly improbable.

Greg Pauls estimates of ~6t for Sue are more accurate. He usually "Shrink wraps" his dinosaurs though, doesn't account for tissue, organs, etc. Some where around 7 tons is more accurate IMO.

Can't speak for Sue, but considering I've seen the holotype, I can tell you it's the original skeleton(the skull is a replica, the real one is in the lab, but the rest of it isn't).

Here's another source for a 9 ton esitmate for Sue...

http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0026037

In this PLOS ONE article, it mentions her weighing ~9500 kg or 9-10 tons. How bout that?!

While doing some digging(no pun intended), I found something else. Wankel Rex(also known as Devil Rex and MOR 555) is 38 ft long and an estimated 5-6 tons. The holotype is only a foot longer and weighes 1-2 tons more.

As a side note, the specimes known as Stan and Scotty are all estimate to be about 40 ft long(40.1 ft for Stan and 40 ft for Scotty). They'd both weigh in the range of 7.5-8.5 tons.

Oh, and who says the model you say is so fat is actually fat? Could just as easily be muscle and you know what, muscle weighs more than fat!

that paper you just put up was the one i was talking about.

that is just a calculation method that is new. it hasnt been applied to other dinosaurs yet. 

if T.Rex weigh more then so would other dinosaurs under this new method of calculating weight. So far they have not calculated the weights of Spino, Giga, Carcha, or any other dino. Using also square cubes law, it is all pointing to a very large Spino which this new Calculating weight method is saying as well that the dinos were somewhat heavier. I still hold my position on the fact too much unbalanced tissue being used.

My question for you is: those new methods give T rex a brand new weight class, it make T rex become much heavier than earlier methods. So how reliable those new methods really are? Do you think 9,5 tonnes for Sue and 8 tonnes for Stan are possible? Do you think it is quite liberal or very accurate ?

 Those new estimates give us quite "fat" models for T rex:

 The 2009 method for Stan model:

_ The 2011 method for Sue model:

I hope you know animals aren't truly all muscle, it would be a mixture of fat and muscle. More fat then anything else.

 And between the 2009 method and the 2011 method, which is likely to be the more accurate method?

I will conceit this;

All animals have quite a range of "normal" adult weights -- for example, I weight nearly twice as much as my sister, and neither of us is considered "fat" It's perfectly possible that BOTH these estimates are correct, for different individuals. I just have my doubts on some of these estimates, if you could provide some evidence(besides that paper) to clarify Tyrannosaurus actually got that large, it would be appreciated!

Until then, i stick by what i've stated in this and previous posts.

I don't care what you stick to just as long as you don't care what I stick to.

No need to argue over this. Everyone has different ways of thinking when it comes to theropod size, so don't get all pissy just because someone disagrees with you. This is for both of you as I prefer to not be one sided.

BTW, just because a method is new, does not mean it's bad. If that's how T.rex was built, with more musle and fat than first realized, then that's how it was built. 

MrHappy, believe me, I try to stay calm. It's not necessarily Acro. It's just that I(and you too) have put up with a lot of crap because of "other members." When I see someone start to go down that same path, I get worried. Hope that makes sense.

Yep. That's why I can't even look at a Rex vs Spino without cringing, wondering if something is going to happen, but damn I'm ready of it does. 

Forgot to say this earlier, but it is an interesting method. 

that method would make all of them look fat though, i've read the paper extensively. A lot of unnecessary tissue going on there..

Though Greg Paul's estimations and skeletals are shrinkwrapped; these two estimation methods are at ends of two extremes. From that, is where i get my estimations and what not.

Not Again...

You really like that picture, don't you?

You got that right, haha

I know, you always seize your oppurtunity to use that picture. I wouldn't be surprised if it was your desktop picture...

Interesting, i didn't know the rex holotype was that large...

And guys, i think if we keep cool, and don't flip shit on what others post, we can have a pretty calm and collected debate. Ain't no need for the hostility!

The muscles make it look a bit on the chubby side.

thanks Carnosaur, ;) and well said.

Well said Carnosaur

2 ft. equals two more tons? Hell no. I don't believe that for one second. The sizing methods used aren't all that trustworthy. I don't believe we'll ever no the exact sizs of any dinosaur. I believe that rex was 40-45 ft. long, 16-17 ft. tall, and 8-9 t (and I'm being generous with that weight). That accounts for the skeleton, organs, fat, muscle, and all the other shit in a t-rex.

I don't think 2 more feet would mean two more tons, that is ridiculous. For the most part, I think Acro Rex is right (except for the 7 t thing). I also think that everyone can be calm and rational. So suck it up and deal with each others' opinions! Have a nice day. :)

@Jezza It has to do with individual weight within a species, not every animal weighs the same! Sue was a much more robust Tyrannosaurus then say Black Beauty, or even Bucky. Thus, Sue would weigh more. What this post simply means is Sue was larger and longer then the holotype...at least i think

I think that perhaps as a Tyrannosaurus got longer, it got more robust. It makes sense, does it not? An adult Tyrannosaurus is muscle on top of muscle, while a juvenile is graceful, slender, lightly built. So, as one got older, it would get bigger and more heavily built. 

That said, not all individuals of the same size are going to weigh the same. It all depends on how well they ate, how often they walked around or hunted, etc. For example, a Tyrannosaurus that followed its main source of food around would be more muscular than a Tyrannosaurus that would lie in wait as it would be more active.

Geographical variation in a species plays a large role too, so in my mind a 9 ton Tyrannosaurus isn't out of the question. We have what? 30 individuals? Sue just happens to be the largest, but there are a few that are almost her size...and there's probably an even larger one waiting to be unearthed.

Probably. Closer to 40 I'm not mistaken, and yeah, the thing was around for two or three million years before it was taken out by an apocalypse.

The point of this post was to show there could be big weight variations in T.rex, even if the length difference was minimal. 

I look at paleontology this way. We can't just jump to conclusions. We can't give a T.rex an exact weight or Troodon an exact IQ. It's like a trial at a court. A jury may be presented with someone convicted of murder, but 90 percent of the evidence points to it being someone else. This person's on trial only because of one or two similarities. The jury can't make a sound ruling based on such circumstantial and fragmentary evidence. Well, we are the jury and paleontology is on trial. Can we really draw such specific conclusions when we don't have all the facts? With absolutly no pun intended(well, some), the jury is still out.

Well said Rex Fan. There are many variables to pretty much everything in Paleontology.

Thank ya, thank ya very much.