The Largest Dinosaur Ever?
 

Argentinosaurus

Height: 70 feet (21.4 meters) About the size of a six story building.

Length: 120 feet (36.6 meters)  Three long school buses end to end.

Weight: 100 tons

Period: Late Cretaceous

Argentinosaurus, recently discovered in Argentina, will probably will turn out to be the largest dinosaur yet discovered, larger than Ultrasauros or Seismosaurus. although Seismosaurus will likely continue to hold the record for total length due to its extremely long tail, characteristic of Diplodocidae.  The cross section of one vertebra found of Argentinosaurus measures over five and one half feet in height.  Evolutionary biologists believe that dinosaurs were able to reach such colossal sizes due to a colossal metabolism.  At the height of its adolescence, Argentinosaurus was probably able to gain about 100 pounds a day!


Dinosaur pictures by Joe Tucciarone, http://members.aol.com/Dinoplanet/dinosaur.html.

How do we figure out how big Argentinosaurus was?  Check out the size of these vertebrae, just a few pieces of bone from the backbone of this creature!  Many of its vertebrae were five feet tall and five feet wide.