The size of Suchomimus Tenerensis
Carnosaur
MemberCompsognathusAugust 14, 20144854 Views17 RepliesToday, we look at the most intact Spinosaurid known, and one of my personal favorites.
Suchomimus is known from several partially complete individuals, and from that we have more to work with, versus, oxalaia which we have very little of.
But, first we take on the controversial issue of this individual being a subadult animal.
if I remember correctly, no where in Sereno et al. 1998 says that the Suchomimus holotype is subadult, Holt'z list 12m, why? I don't know, Sereno said "around 11m" in his typical vague fashion, Hartman's skeletal is 11.8m though. I have yet to read anything on cervical vertabrate being unfused, or any bones that were unearthed for that matter. Unfused bone is characteristic of immature animals, so this is usually what we look for.
From a paper released recently after Suchomimus' discovery in '97(lengths are in milimeters):
BoneSuchomimusBaryonyxAllosaurus Lengths Humerus 560 483* 310 Radius 255 225 222 Metacarpal III 130 ? 101 I 190 173* 102 II 165 ? 92 III 120 120* 54 Femur 1075 ? 850 Tibia 945 ? 690 Ratios Radius/humerus 0.46 0.47 0.72 I/radius 0.75 0.77 0.46 II/I 0.87 ? 0.90 III/I 0.63 0.69 0.53 Tibia/femur 0.88 ?
With these numbers, we can tell it was already larger then both height and perhaps length. Spinosaurs, being moderately built animals, weren't record breakers weight wise. Suchomimus doesn't appear to be as gracile as baryonyx, and it being a couple meters longer and a bit more robustly built we can say with the uttermost certainty that Suchomimus was a tad bit larger.
Piecing the skull fragments together, Suchomimus had a skull just under four feet in lenght. (1,2 m or 3 ft 11,25 in)
the 1:8 ratio designed for theropods(what i've referred to as the eights rule constantly here),
3.8 x 8 yields~ 30.4 feet.
That just seems off to me, and consulting Scott Hartman on DeviantArt, i've come to the conclusion that this ratio doesn't fit too well with the spinosaurids.
Femur/ weight ratio provides a TBW of 3.4 tons
Baryonyx weighed approximately 2 tons, and is considered a subadult as well(i'll get to that guy later)
Scaling up a baryonyx to 11 meters, provides us with 3.76 tons.
Having no other relatively close(or reasonably intact) spinosaurs to base off of, this is what we have.
Overall, Suchomimus Tenerensis was roughly 11.5 meters in length, and tipped the scales at 3-4 tons.
Nature doesn't deceive us; it is we who deceive ourselves.
Pretty nice topic Carnosaur. To some extend I agree with everything you have stated but there are some stuff I want you to see:
Check this Suchomimus skeleton out:
As you can see, they were fairly bulky creatures. I think it averaged a weight of 3-5 tons. As for the holotype specimen of a sub-adult 11m Suchomimus, I heard it's bones were not fully mature. Just my 2 cents
