Samson's height

Tyrannosaurus is 4 meters tall, blah blah blah. That's what most random online sources tall you.

But that figure is total nonsense, a fantasy with no basis in reality. In reality, T. rex's hip height levels out at around ~3.5 meters, give or take, whether the T. rex be Stan to CM 9380 to Sue.

Tyrannosaurus rex skeletal reconstructions by Scott Hartman. I do not own anything from this.

But is Sue the tallest Tyrannosaurus? Some, well, sources (including Wikipedia) states that Samson is the tallest known T. rex at an alleged ~4.6 meters in hip height. This is a mounted skeleton of Samson, with a woman standing next to the skeleton for scale:

Samson's mounted skeleton, mostly speculative though

And here's Samson's known bones and measurements, from the Theropod Database:

"skull (1.4 m), mandibles (dentary 870 mm), twenty-two teeth, nine cervical vertebrae, two cervical ribs, seven dorsal vertebrae, ten dorsal ribs, seventeen caudal vertebrae, four chevrons, femora (1.295 m), tibial fragments, fibula, metatarsal II (610 mm), metatarsal III, metatarsal IV (635 mm), ten pedal phalanges"

Samson's mounted skeleton measured

 If Samson were to be ~4.6 meters tall at the hips, then the woman standing next to it would have to be around ~1.99 meters tall. Although not impossible, women, or for that matter, humans, of that height are rare, and they tend to have more elongated builds. Assuming that this woman is almost 2 meters tall isn't the most parsimonius option. Also, this would make Samson's femur around ~1.61 meters long, which is a whopping ~24.32% longer than the measurement from the Theropod Database.

Assuming an average height of ~1.65 meters for the woman, Samson would be around ~3.8 meters tall at the hips. It's much lower than the exaggerated ~4.6 meter figure, but it's still a bit too high, as this would make Samson's femur around ~1.33 meters long, longer than the actual femur measurement.

Taking the femur length of ~1.295 meters, this yields a total hip height of ~3.7 meters for Samson (while the woman would be around ~1.6 meters tall). This is quite tall for a Tyrannosaurus, but not so tall as to be implausible.

Taller than Sue? Maybe, if that ilium, which isn't actually known from Samson, was actually reconstructed accurately. Why is the front part of that ilium so much higher than the rear portion, with a steep transition closer to the rear portion? That's not the case with Tyrannosaurus ilia.

Tyrannosaurus rex specimen AMNH 5027. Notice the ilium shape.

Sue and Stan skeletal reconstructions by Scott Hartman. Notice their ilium shape.

We'll see more about Samson in the next post.

The forgotten Xinghesaurus

Some dinosaurs, like Tyrannosaurus, get far too much attention. Many others get much less, but still get attention. And there's the obscure.

Xinghesaurus is one of the most obscure dinosaurs ever named. It's not even formally described! So far, the palaeocommunity has ignored the very existence of this mysterious sauropod. There is no single raw measurement or even a single mention in a survey.

A Xinghesaurus mount was displayed in a Tokyo museum exhibit, one which also contains a mounted skeleton of the enormous Mamenchisaurus sinocanadorum(supposedly claimed to have a mass upwards of 70 tonnes, but is likely closer to 50 tonnes).

A closer look, perhaps?

Much better. Seems to be a nemegtosaurid with similarities to Huabeisaurus.

Here's one from the rear:

This is what we have of it so far. A mounted skeleton without a description paper or a single bone measurement. We don't even know how much of it is reconstructed.

But maybe we can estimate it's size based on these pictures?

Well, we can, but we have to take the results with a grain of salt. For starters, the bones can be compared with something close in proximity to it as to minimize the impact of perspective, such as the people surrounding the mounted skeleton.

Using that man bending down just beside the Xinghesaurus' hindlimb as a guide, the femur is around 2/3 of the man's height. Assuming that the man is at the average human height of ~165 centimeters, the Xinghesaurus femur would be about ~110 centimeters long. If we use the average height for Japanese males instead, which is about ~170.7 centimeters, the Xinghesaurus femur ends up at ~113.8 centimeters long.

Using the picture of the Xinghesaurus' rear, the resulting femur length could be used to estimate the hip height and possibly body width.

 

The hip height, which is approximately ~2.379 times the femur length, would be about ~2.617 meters based on the ~110-centimeter femur, or ~2.708 meters based on the ~113.8-centimeter femur.

The width at the hips(~75% of femur length) would be about ~82.5 centimeters based on the ~110-centimeter femur and ~85.35 centimeters based on the ~113.8 centimeter femur.

Based on the very limited information we have to date, Xinghesaurus seems to be a small sauropod, although you still don't want it to step on your toes.

But how large is it overall, at least based on the mount? We'll see in the next post.