Comment on T. rex
scratchee@feddit.uk 3 months agoI don’t think that’s what the meme is claiming.
I think instead it’s just claiming that all fossils have the same implied increase in maximum size implied by the paper, not just T rex.
I’m guessing the illiterate paleo fans were excited that maybe T rex was king of the dinosaurs again, but the logic fails if all the dinosaurs get bigger max sizes…
Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world 3 months ago
If that were the case then the first sentence wouldn’t claim that there are physical limits.
I dug up the paper.
“Biomechanical and ecological limitations notwithstanding, we estimate that the absolute largest T. rex may have been 70% more massive than the currently largest known specimen (~15,000 vs. ~8800 kg).”
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ece3.11658
That is the paper says, if we ignore biomechanical limits, statistically there could be a T-Rex that’s 70% bigger than what we have already found.
scratchee@feddit.uk 3 months ago
That does make sense, though I read it as:
[the new, expanded] upper body size limits…
Is how I read it, but your interpretation works well too, so I don’t really know now.