Amphicoelias fragillimus, a sauropod herbivorous dinosaur, may have been the largest animal to ever live, estimated to be 40-60m long and up to 122 tonnes. Its veracity is disputed due to the loss of its only bones, a partial vertebra and a gigantic femur. The fragility of the fossil and the weak rock it was found in may have contributed to its loss. The dinosaur was likely a warm-blooded diplodocid that spent its time grazing foliage at a height of 9m. Its age and growth rate are unknown.
Amphicoelias fragillimus was a sauropod herbivorous dinosaur, possibly the largest dinosaur (or animal of any kind) that ever lived. Its veracity is disputed because the dinosaur’s only bones, a partial vertebra and a gigantic femur, have been lost. The vertebra fragment, located by an employee of American paleontologist Edward Cope in 1877, measured 1.5 m (5 ft) in length. The vertebra it was part of during the dinosaur’s lifetime would have been 2.7 m (8.8 ft) long. Extrapolating the length of the vertebra to the dinosaur’s total size, based on similar species, gave an estimated length of 40–60 m (131–196 ft), with a mass of up to 122 tonnes (135 tons), longer than a whale light blue but about two-thirds its weight.
Amphicoelias, meaning “double hollow,” is a reference to the animal’s thin vertebral walls, which would have been necessary for an animal of that size to carry its own skeleton. The second part of the specific name, fragillimus, is a reference to the fragility of the fossil. It was discovered in Colorado mudstone, a weak rock that has a tendency to fragment into small irregular cubes. A sketch of the fossil was only completed from one angle, which is unusual given Edward Cope’s reputation for detailing and drawing from multiple angles of every important fossil. Historians believe this may be because the fossil fragmented into pieces after the first splash.
Amphicoelias was a diplodocid dinosaur, a family of sauropods known for their extremely long and slender bodies. Like other sauropods, an adult Amphicoelias likely would have had little need to worry about predators, spending all of its time grazing foliage at the same height as its head, which would have been about 9 m (30 ft) off the ground. It’s not clear how old the dinosaur was when it died or how fast it grew – it depends on its metabolism. If it were warm-blooded like mammals, it would have grown to its full size in about 10 years, growing an average of about 20 feet a year, 1.7 feet a month, or a few inches a day. Had it been as cold-blooded as the reptiles, it would have taken a whole century to reach the size it died at. Scientists continue to debate whether dinosaurs in general were cold-blooded or warm-blooded, and the consensus seems to be that they fell somewhere in between.
Unfortunately, all accounts of Amphicoelias after 1870 indicate that the bones in question were missing. Thus, there is considerable controversy whenever dinosaur is presented as one of the largest creatures that ever lived.
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