The size of Shantungosaurus Giganteus

A look at the largest non sauropod dinosaur to ever walk the face of the earth. Nuff said.

First described in 1973, Shantungosaurus is known from over five incomplete skeletons. Chinese Paleontologist Xing Xu and his colleagues indicate that Shantungosaurus is very similar to and shares many unique characters with Edmontosaurus.

Remains of a potentially equally as giant Hadrosaur in Zhuchengosaurus Maximus surfaced in 2007, and consisted of several incomplete individuals.

In recent years though, it has been shown that these"distinctive traits" are just characteristics of different growth stages. That in itself, gives us a more detailed picture of Shantungosaurus then we previously could have hoped for.

The holotype skull is 1.63 metres (5.3 ft) long

The 1:8 ratio yields ~ 42.4 feet(12.4 meters)

The holotype of Shantungosaurus has femora 165-166cm long, tibiae 147-149cm long, humeri 99-100cm long and ilia 156-167cm long, Greg Paul's skeletal scaled to have a femur 165cm long seems to be a good match for this measurements, it's axial length is 13.3m, 

It gets complicated when we get to the supposedly larger specimens, the one originally referred to Zhuchengosaurus has a museum mount supposedly 16.6m long but its measurement go like this: femur 170cm long, tibia 144cm long, humeri 100-105cm long, ilium 160cm long. So how much bigger is it? 0? 4%? is it 13.8m long? 

Then we have the one referred to Huaxiaosaurus, the museum mount is supposedly almost 19m long but the measurements go like this: femora 170-172cm long, tibiae 145-147cm long, ilia 180-182cm long, humeri 92-98cm long. The femora are about 4% larger but the tibiae are slightly shorter as are the humeri, only the ilia are significantly larger by about 12%. I don't know what to make out of this proportions, crushing and distortion maybe? obviously individual variation has a hand too but how did Greg Paul estimated a total length of 15m? maybe I should look at the vertebral column, maybe the larger (older?) individuals just have proportionally shorter limbs. 

I think What we have is three different species representing the same one. Huaxiasaurus, Zhuchengosaurus, and Shantungosaurus are the same animal. The distinguishing traits that Xiu noted are nothing more then this Saurolophine Hadrosaur at differing growth stages. That being said, the largest plausible size(based on the femora, humeri, ilia, and tibia) is 15 meters. That being said, a length of 14 meters and a weight of twelve tons for this saurolophine look the most plausible for the material we have. Overexaggerated mounts and dubious field reports, as well as confused taxonomical branches, led to the overestimations for Shantungosaurus, though it does indeed live up to its name "Giganteus".

(Size comparison added by Rex Fan 684)