While many non-avian dinosaurs achieved gigantic sizes, the Sauropods were the true giants of the Mesozoic. in fact, the largest terrestrial vertebrates to ever live are members of this clade. However, it is not easy to estimate how large an animal was from just a fossil skeleton. Which of these is a method by which dinosaur body size is estimated?

a. Paleontologists measure the length of the legs from the hip to the foot and using a 2/3's power relationship convert that to a mass

b. Paleontologists use Archimedes principle and dunk the entire skeleton of a Sauropod into a pool of water and measure the water displacement

c. Paleontologists make scaie models with estimates of muscle mass, density and skin morphology and then estimate the volume of the model and scale it up

d. a and b

e. a and c

Question

Kathy Wolfe

Biology

13 February, 19:27

While many non-avian dinosaurs achieved gigantic sizes, the Sauropods were the true giants of the Mesozoic. in fact, the largest terrestrial vertebrates to ever live are members of this clade. However, it is not easy to estimate how large an animal was from just a fossil skeleton. Which of these is a method by which dinosaur body size is estimated?

a. Paleontologists measure the length of the legs from the hip to the foot and using a 2/3's power relationship convert that to a mass

b. Paleontologists use Archimedes principle and dunk the entire skeleton of a Sauropod into a pool of water and measure the water displacement

c. Paleontologists make scaie models with estimates of muscle mass, density and skin morphology and then estimate the volume of the model and scale it up

d. a and b

e. a and c

+2

Answers (1)

Know the Answer?

Melanie Reynolds · Answer 1

The correct answer is option d. "a and b".

Explanation:

Plenty of methods had been developed to estimate the body size of dinosaurs such as the gigantic Sauropods. One of the first estimations that paleontologists used was the Archimedes principle, consisting in dunking the entire skeleton of a Sauropod into a pool of water and measure the water displacement or more precisely small dinosaur models. However this method requires the preservation of almost the entire skeleton. A more used and useful method is to measure the length of the legs from the hip to the foot and using a 2/3's power relationship convert that to a mass. This method is more used since it only requires a couple of leg bones, which are often well preserved.