Not so gigantic after all: Response to Lacovara et. al.

<p>Lacovara et al. (2014) described a large juvenile titanosaurian sauropod dinosaur skeleton that they claimed was unusually enormous at ~60 tonnes. That mass estimate is too high by a factor of about two, and numerous other sauropods were larger, sometimes much larger, than the <em>Dreadnoughtus</em> holotype.</p> <p>Had Lacovara et al. estimated the mass of the juvenile <em>Dreadnoughtus</em> from a life volume estimate based on their digitized skeletal, or even their conventional restoration when scaled to the size of the vertebrae, then they would have arrived at a much lower and more realistic tonnage.</p>