Possibly the largest biped ever...and it's from the Triassic

Many people think of the Triassic as the time when dinosaurs were relatively minor players in the scene, being runts in a world full of non-dinosaur giants.

This isn't true. There are already large dinosaurs in the Triassic, especially the basal sauropodomorphs, also known as "prosauropods", some of which can grow up to multiple tonnes in mass.

But there is one.

One basal sauropodomorph to rule them all.

One so large, it would completely change your entire concept of Triassic animal life.

One so large, that it takes the throne of the largest known biped.

Unfortunately, it doesn't have a name yet.


This paper: A Diplodocus-sized basal sauropodomorph from the Late Triassic of South Africa

This piece of scientific literature speaks of a dinosaur in the legendary size class by pre-Jurassic standards. Estimated at up to ~15 tonnes, it competes in size with midsize Jurassic sauropods such as Diplodocus, and throws Spinosaurus right off the throne of largest known biped.

It also shows that you don't need to be a Jurassic or a Cretaceous dinosaur to be a legendary giant.

This dinosaur is closely related to Aardonyx. It's bones are, on average, ~190% of the dimensions of Aardonyx bones. It's femur alone is ~1.5 meters long, longer than any known theropod femur.

This image below should give you an idea of size. The king of the tyrant dinosaurs only just about matches the enormous Triassic legend in height only, and consider that basal sauropodomorphs are pretty low-slung for their size. This comparison doesn't even address the increase in bulkiness and robusticity that the large size would have required due to natural scaling laws.

Maybe we should reconsider about how we picture the Triassic period. Maybe it wasn't too different from the two later periods.
Tyrannosaurus based on Scott Hartman's skeletal.

A rather large sauropod claw...

 Article here: http://www.sudouest.fr/2014/07/26/angeac-charente-16-une-rarissime-griffe-de-dinosaure-decouverte-juste-avant-l-orage-1626256-726.php

A ~34-centimeter long sauropod claw was found in Early Cretaceous(~130 Ma) rocks at the site of Angeac-Charente in France. It was unearthed on July 27, 2014 before a storm arrived.

It was heavily eroded, missing the tip. It's length could likely be be closing it at around ~40 centimeters in life, give or take.

That claw would have been long enough to impale a human right through.

According to the article, the sauropod could have measured ~40 meters long in life, which would make it one of the largest known dinosaurs. But, as I've stated several times in the past, estimating total size based on toe bones is unwise.

 

Another image just to give you a further idea of it's size.

I translated the article as much as I can. There may be errors as I am not a French speaker.

Translated article:

The phenomenal discoveries continue on the paleontological site Angeac-Charente, one of the largest in Europe. The first three weeks of excavation have already collected 800 determinable bones and several thousand fragments. With a stegosaurus vertebra and a fossil turtle, a 34-centimeter sauropod claw was unearthed on Saturday. The large herbivore that lived there 130 million years ago could measure 40 meters in length.

This is actually the terminal phalanx of the finger of a large sauropod leg. It measures 0.34 meters long and it's impressive size is related with the rest of the animal, one of the largest known species in the world. It was covered with a horny sheath.

"The terminal phalanges of the four fingers were short and covered with a nail or shoe resembling those of the elephant" says Jean-François Tournepiche, the curator of the Museum of Angoulême, who oversees the excavations with Ronan Allain, a paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Paris.
 
"To support a weight of several tens of tonnes, the leg bones of the animal are structured as elements of a column and feet rest on the ends of phalanges" he explains.
 
Researchers have had little time to savor this rare find. Afterwards, a violent storm made ​​landfall on the site. The excavation site was almost completely flooded. Scientists tell the story of the day which played with their nerves on their blog, called "The wrath of the great sauropod".

Are conservative reconstructions that much better than liberal ones?

Are they?

Most who look into the palaeozoology field thinks so, and even I thought so. We assume that fragmentary taxa look just like their relatives.

But after Deinocheirus, which with it's unique, unexpected features, does this line of thought still hold true? We have long assumed Deinocheirus to look just like a plain ornithomimosaur, but much larger.

To me, at least, it placed doubt on my idea of conservative > liberal in palaeo-restorations.

Conservative reconstructions may still be better than liberal ones, but the difference between their validity may likely never be as significant as it once was, to me at least.

We shoudn't attach glorifying lables to any animal. Yes, not even humans.

Earth has been populated by billions of animal species throughout the ~3,800,000,000-billion year history of life. Over a million, in extant animal species alone, has been discovered.

Yet, few are known to the general public, and yet fewer are actually recognized as significant. And those few are often overrated. Part of the reason why this is so, is because of the titles given to certain animal species/genera.


Some examples:

Tyrannosaurus rex = "King of dinosaurs"
Homo sapiens(anatomically modern humans) = "Crown of creation"
Argentinosaurus huinculensis = "Largest dinosaur ever"
Balaenoptera musculus = "Largest animal ever"
Panthera leo(Lion)  = "King of the beasts"


These titles draw quite a lot of attention most of the time, often away from many interesting species. Although the case with Homo sapiens can't really be helped, can't it? Popularizing selected genera instead of giving all of them the spotlight, causes massive fanbases that can be quite stubborn at times, such as the case of the Tyrannosaurus fanbase.

We should not be giving any glorification titles to any species at all. The amount of potential undiscovered species is too vast. There may very well be a titanic ~10+ tonne carnosaur, a ~250-350 tonne ichthyosaur, or even a sapient species that went extinct millions of years ago and thus had their civilization crumble completely long before humans evolved, buried down there. We don''t really know what's down or out there.

There is an ocean of unknowns out there. Consider them, and do not glorify the known creatures as if they were the absolute pinnacle of an attribute. Stop with the title giving.

Do not call Tyrannosaurus the king, stop the overly biased anthropocentric views, stop with the "whales are the largest ever" statements. As mentioned before, there is a vast ocean of unknowns out there, and ignoring this is foolish.