I Know Dino Podcast: Giganotosaurus

Episode 23 is all about Giganotosaurus carolinii, a predator from South America.

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Identify means “big southern lizard”
Carolinii identify got here from Ruben Carolini, an beginner fossil hunter who discovered Giganotosaurus within the Rio Limay Formation of Patagonia in 1993
First described within the journal Nature, by paleontologists Rodolfo Coria and Leonardo Salgado in 1995 (regarded as the biggest carnivorous dinosaur on the time)

Giganotosaurus was discovered close to Villa el Chocon, which now has a Giganotosaurus statue beside the highway
First skeleton discovered was 70% full, and included the cranium, pelvis, leg bones and a lot of the spine (was 6.5 tons, 13 ft tall at hip, 40-41 ft lengthy)
A second Giganotosaurus skeleton was estimated to be 8% greater (43 ft lengthy and eight tons)

Giganotosaurus about 100 to 90 million years in the past, throughout the mid Cretaceous time
It had a small mind for its dimension (dimension of a banana), however had a superb sense of scent
Cranium was about 6 ft lengthy

Giganotosaurus had sharp, 8-inch enamel with serrated edges, three-fingered “arms” and two quick arms, and a skinny, pointed tail
Additionally was bipedal, with highly effective legs that would transfer as much as 31 mph; might flip shortly whereas working
Might have hunted titanosaurids, like Argentinosaurus; different titanosaurs discovered close to Giganotosaurus had been Andesaurus and Limaysaurus

Wouldn’t have been capable of tackle an grownup alone; might have hunted in packs to take down giant prey
Used its enamel to slice via prey (frequent to its household carcharodontosaurids); bones of Argentinosaurus had been too giant to crunch with enamel, so Giganotosaurus would have needed to chunk on softer tissue, raking throughout the flesh
Then it might look ahead to the Argentinosaurus to lose blood of be contaminated and die (might have focused leg muscle groups to sever a tendon and cripple the titanosaur)

Seven skeletons of Mapusaurus, an in depth cousin that regarded related, the place present in the identical space as Giganotosaurus (means they died close to one another, however raises the likelihood that they lived in a neighborhood)
Giganotosaurus rescued the protagonists in James Gureny’s Dinotopia from a T-rex
Giganotosaurus can also be within the fifth Land Earlier than Time film, and within the 2008 film Journey to the Heart of the Earth

Carcharodontosaurids means “shark-toothed lizards” and so they had been a gaggle of carnivorous theropods
Ernst Stromer named the Carcharodontosauridae household in 1931
Some Carcharodontosaurids embrace Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus, Carcharodontosaurus, and Tyrannotitan, which had been all related in dimension or barely greater than T-rex

In 2006, when Mapusaurus was found, Rodolfo Coria and Phil Currie named a subfamily of Carcharodontosauridae, known as Giganotosaurinae, for essentially the most superior species from South America (which had been extra carefully associated than those from Africa and Europe)
Enjoyable truth: 99% of all species are extinct (10-14 million are round in the present day)