A recent study on the curvature of bones in Dinosaurs shows that the creatures that roamed the earth thousands of years before us were a bit skinnier than we would perceive and lighter than most projected. Usually scientist would measure the bones width and height and make assumptions about size Charlotte Brassey a biomechanist at the University Of Manchester England a researcher in the study said it’s different than the take a measurement and then “scal[e] this up to the size of a dinosaur” approach. Her new study of the curvature of the bones and how the stress amasses on the bones may paint a slightly different picture on what these prehistoric creatures were actually like. Hit the jump for more.
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For the sake of simplicity, these calculations often model leg bones as columnar beams. However, “as soon as we introduce irregularities into their shape — the lumps, bumps and curves that are typical of animal bones — then they no longer behave like columns,” Brassey told LiveScience.
When the researchers carried out such a whole-body approach to mass prediction with Giraffatitan, the giant dinosaur previously called Brachiosaurus, they came up with a body mass of 25 tons (23 metric tons), “which is quite a bit lower than some previous predictions,” Brassey said. Previous mass estimates for Giraffatitan ranged from 31 to 86 tons (28 to 78 metric tons.)
