How do paleontologists calculate the weight of a dinosaur?

One thing that most of us probably know, dinosaurs is the largest animal ever to appear on Earth. Some of them can reach super huge sizes, maybe even heavier than 70 tons. But in fact, we cannot see a flesh-and-blood dinosaur today, so how do we know their weight?

At the end of 2019, the famous paleontologist Gregory S. Paul also conducted a systematic study of this issue. See how he measures the weight of these dinosaurs. And some points of view about calculating the weight of extinct animals at this stage.

Gregory Scott Paul is an American freelance researcher, author and artist, working in paleontology, sociological and theological examination. He is best known for his work on dinosaur research.

The method that Paul uses is still a very traditional "model mass calculation method," which is to create a miniature dinosaur model, then divide and place them into the water to calculate the mass of the model. each department.

To prevent measurement errors, each model makes a few measurements and eventually averages. However, as technology has become more and more advanced, with the development of digital technologies such as scanning and 3D modeling, it seems that this classic method is still quite reliable.

In a special exhibit of the American Museum of Natural History, paleontologists are restoring the muscles and skin of the giant sauropod dinosaur.

Currently, the method of calculating the weight of dinosaurs in many articles is to scan the bones of the dinosaurs to get three-dimensional data of the skeleton, then rely on this model to restore the dinosaur's living body, then Cut it to calculate the volume. The body part uses different density formulas to calculate weight, and finally adds values ​​to get the weight of the dinosaur.

The method seems very logical, but if there is a problem in a link, it will affect the end result. First, if the skeleton is scanned incorrectly, such as a problem with the body's proportions, the result is wrong from the start.

The restoration of a living body based on the skeleton is also very complicated, requiring the moderator to have knowledge of animal anatomy, understand the structure of the dinosaurs and preferably have experience in restoring animals. when animals became extinct. However, most researchers who have implemented 3D scanned skeletal models do not have the same experience, so the model created was really very primitive and far removed from the actual dinosaur shape. .

The skeleton of the Patagotitan dinosaur.

Photo of Patagotitan dinosaur after being restored.

Therefore, if a 3D scan is performed on the wrong bone, it will lead to a wrong model performance and the reliability of the final result will obviously be inaccurate.

To verify this conclusion, Paul selected a number of sauropod dinosaurs to calculate using the traditional "model mass calculation method".

Paul's experience and ability to recover dinosaurs are clearer than modern paleontologists, and he can even be considered a pioneer of the Dinosaur Renaissance - an era of influence. huge to paleontologists today. Through the results of the calculations, it was found that most of the species tested had a significant deviation from the data obtained from the digital model.

Therefore, a conclusion can be drawn: the digital model for calculating the weight of a dinosaur may not be more accurate than the traditional model calculation.

In addition to more advanced technologies such as modeling and scanning, there are also several formulas for calculating body weight based on the circumference of the limbs of dinosaurs. However, this method has many disadvantages. Because huge dinosaur legs are so thick, the formula will usually result in greater than the actual weight. Including the use of volume and spine area to estimate the weight of dinosaurs also exists very limited because there will be differences in body structure between different dinosaurs.

However, calculating the weight of a dinosaur by the method of communication is not without deficiencies, after all, the accuracy of the manual calculation is still difficult to be compared with the computer's CPU. . So the most sensible method today is for an experienced team of manual dinosaur model reconstruction to do the scanning and reconstructing the 3D dinosaur bone structure, and the rest of the calculation will belong to Paleontologists.

From the research of Gregory S. Paul, it is not difficult to find that estimates of the size and weight of dinosaurs, especially giant dinosaurs are still limited by many factors, including the reason jelly and artificial engineering. In any case, with a combination of traditional methods and modern technology, we are getting closer and closer to the real face of the dinosaurs!