New research hints at how sauropod dinosaurs got to be so gargantuan
Of all the animals ever to have roamed the planet, the iconic long-necked, long-tailed dinosaurs known as sauropods stand unrivaled. No other terrestrial creatures have come close to attaining their colossal sizes. They overshadowed all other dinosaurs, from the duck-billed hadrosaurs and the horned ceratopsians to the armored ankylosaurs and predatory tyrannosaurs.
There's a human element holding back the sauropod fossil record as well. A paleontologist can spend a field expedition digging up just a handful of sauropod bones or, in the same amount of time, scout and collect several skeletons of smaller creatures. Likewise, scientists can spend their finite research time in a museum waiting to get a single bone down from a shelf with a forklift or get straight to the business of studying the anatomy of a more sensibly sized animal.
Their diversity of body forms also makes comparing the evolution of body size in terms of length or height tricky, so biologists turn to body mass to make more equitable comparisons. Body mass is not just useful for making apples-to-apples comparisons. It also correlates with biologically important features such as metabolic rate, growth rate, nest clutch size, longevity and home range size.
From this relatively modest stock, I found, sauropods evolved their record sizes a remarkable three dozen times on six landmasses over the course of 100 million years. Sauropods evolved their hallmark sizes early on, and with each new family to evolve, one or more lineages independently reached superlative status.
Studies of the bones of several sauropod species have revealed how they accomplished this growth. Just as trees contain rings that can be counted to determine their ages and growth histories, bones contain rings that record a vertebrate animal's age and its rate and duration of growth. Modern-day vertebrates exhibit a variety of growth strategies. Reptiles, including alligators, lizards and turtles, grow relatively slowly, whereas large mammals such as the blue whale grow rapidly.
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