Days of digging uncovered bone after bone after bone, until they had so many bones, they could actually ! gure out how heavy the dinosaur was! Diego measured the dinosaur’s leg and arm bones and began calculating how many pounds each bone could carry. “Did you ! gure it out?” José asked eagerly.
or weight, of an extinct dinosaur can be estimated by measuring the circumference, or overall thickness, of its leg bones. In the case of quadrupedal animals—animals that walk on four legs—the major front leg bones are called the humeri and the major back leg bones are called the femora. Heavier animals require thicker bones to support their weight, so there is a specific relationship between these measurements and the body mass. If you know how thick the leg bones are, you can calculate how heavy the animal was! This wasn’t just a titanosaur, it was the largest dinosaur ever found! An African elephant weighs between 2.5–7 tons. Imagine adding ten 7-ton elephants together! THE BODY MASS ,
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