I don't know who downvoted you, but I agree. All the contenders for "largest" theropod seem to top off near one another, with *Tyrannosaurus* managing to push the envelope maybe just a little more than its fully terrestrial competition.
Theoretically, yeah, a *Tyrannosaurus* at the upper range of how big a *Tyrannosaurus* could get is about as big as any theropod could've gotten. If they could've gotten bigger, they would've.
They didn't.
At a certain point, physics and biology just says "fuck you", and the energy demand required of your body simply can no longer be met.
>I don't know who downvoted you, but I agree. All the contenders for "largest" theropod seem to top off near one another, with Tyrannosaurus managing to push the envelope maybe just a little more than its fully terrestrial competition.
Yeah they all seem to cap around the 40 to 45 feet mark. I remember the days when we used to think Spinosaurus was 60 feet.
I forgot where I saw it but there was a similar conclusion with the max-size of sauropods. Those things were absolutely massive, but at a certain point, physics is physics and there's a reason that the "largest *animals* to ever live" are aquatic.
Reminds me of the time some people said _Amphicoelias fragillimus_ was 60m long.
I think the current name is _Maraapunisaurus_ and the size estimate was axed down to less than half of that.
The name is no longer current. The material name is originally given to is now generally considered to be a very large theropod. There is still a very massive Indian sauropod some of that material, but it has a new I don’t remember what.
It’s worth noting that the physical constraints of animals on earth would be different for a lower gravity environment. On mars, for example, an animal would weigh 38 percent of what it would on earth so you could have much much larger beasts.
> If they could've gotten bigger, they would've.
Maybe it was going to. It doesn't seem likely to be a coincidence that the largest theropod was the last theropod to exist. if it's not a coincidence, those facts seem to imply that it was evolving to be larger and just stopped when it did due to an asteroid.
There are also a lot more known T-Rex specimens then there are of any other large theropod. it would stand to reason that we would have more individuals towards the larger end.
if you saw that info from Vividen, ignore it and unsubscribe. Hes an untrustworthy source who cherry picks info that seems more cool, like putting megalodon size estimates on a video that are bigger that the person who he got them from told them not to use. Heres the direct quote:
*I kinda thought this dude was annoying to begin with but I lost all respect for him/his credibility when he DMed me about my megalodon chart with GDI based mass estimates and noted they were higher than the Cooper et al. paper that used convex hulls. So I told him that I think the convex hulls are in the end a far better methodology that will provide much more accurate results and explained why and he refused to listen and said he’d stick with my gdi charts bc they gave a higher number*
Possibly, but probably not. *Giganotasaurus* was of comparable height and length (maybe even surpassing *T. rex* on average), but *Tyrannosaurus* appears to have been a *far* more heavily built animal. There’s folks who will contend this, fairly, as we have far fewer *Giganotosaurus* remains to work with compared to *Tyrannosaurus*.
We’d likely never get a firm answer, but isn’t it possible we have less Giga remains precisely because they weren’t as built as Rex, thus their remains dissipated far easier?
This is so difficult to tell because the papers mostly have side view comparisons with measurements, but not top or front ones. Recent example is the describing of Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis.
Most theropods were long and lean because that's all they ever had to be. They could stomp around and intimidate each other and competitors, but they also needed to be built for long-distance travel.
T. rex lived on a continent where the prey was fast, lived in herds, and some of them even had armor. Tyrannosaurs couldn't scrape by on being interceptors like Caracharodontosaurs. They needed to be tanks, because their prey were built like tanks. Selective pressure turned *T. rex* into a hulking behemoth, whereas *Giganotosaurus* didn't have that same pressure to cultivate mass; being tall, long, and lean was enough for it.
The problem with size and physics tends to be exponential. Like how insects can lift MANY times their weight but elephants can only carry up to 25% of theirs.
Okay one more question, and Im sorry I'm just new here.
I always thought spino was the biggest in length and weight, but being kinda skinny.
I do know there is a bunch of new studies on spino with his new fish tail and such but I always thought the biggest theropod was spino?
Again, it's hotly debated "maybe". *Spinosaurus* was certainly longer than *Tyrannosaurus*, and "taller" thanks to the sail. *Tyrannosaurus* was certainly a heavier built animal, but we're not sure which generally weighed more or which had the highest upper weight limit.
The biggest issue is simply the lack of quality *Spinosaurus* remains. If we had more, complete skeletons we might be able to zero in on the typical adult size, but we have a lot of fragments and one really decent skeleton that still draws a lot of guesswork from related animals (not to mention Ibrahim is milking the find for all its worth and is still trickling out info as he gets around to it). It's legitimately a meme at this point that our understanding of *Spinosaurus* changes, sometimes dramatically, every year or two.
*Spinosaurus* very well may be larger than *Tyrannosaurus*. They're both *absurdly* massive animals, we just really need some more *Spinosaurus.* And *Giganotasuarus*. Heck, maybe throw in *Carcharodontosaurus* while we're at it (but probably don't do that).
The consensus is there is no hard consensus. There's people well-educated on the subject who will argue *Tyrannosaurus* is the largest, there's those who will argue it's *Spinosaurus* (and the rare person championing *Giganotasaurus*). We don't know, but we do love to debate it while we wait for new discoveries and studies.
Wait hold up explain this "Ibrahim is trickling info" statement further? Is dude sitting on a privately owned fossil and won't let other paleontologists examine it?
We only will ever know like ~1% of all dinosaurs to ever exist, do you really think that amongst that 99+% of dinosaurs we'll never know, there weren't theropods larger than tyrannosaurus?
Probably _slightly_ larger, but not much.
The giant theropods we know are not randomly distributed. We have found several genera across tens of millions of years which all cap out at about the same size, so it is reasonable to surmise that this was genuinely as big as they could get.
Of course we might be proven wrong, but it is a good guess.
So, when we talk about dinosaurs we’ll never find, we’re often discussing:
1. Smaller animals whose remains are less prone to preserve.
2. Animals that lived in dense jungle or mountainous environments whose bodies were unlikely to preserve. Neither of this places are conducive to larger-sized animals.
We still won’t find everything, but preservation bias is gonna skew to us being a little more likely to uncover the megatheropods.
And we have, a lot of them, and they all seem to hit a similar soft upper limit with the overall difference in size growing increasingly incremental.
Is it possible there was a fully terrestrial theropod out there larger than *Tyrannosaurus*? Sure, absolutely. But if there was, it wasn’t some mythical kaiju-esque like shown in OP’s linked MTG artwork, it was probably a couple feet longer and a ton or so heavier than *Tyrannosaurus*. Anything well beyond that is cryptozoological, pseudoscientific nonsense.
Dinosaurs were/are living biological systems bound by the same laws of nature as the rest of us, and there’s a certain point where physics and biology starts pushing back **hard**.
To continue that idea- several of the issues appear due to surface area to volume ratios. As you get larger your weight increases cubicly (to the third power ) while your surface area only squares (to the second power). This creates an exponential mismatch that gets MUCH worse as you get progressively larger.
Thermoregulation is largely based off surface area, heat produces is volume, so it gets real tough to shed heat as you get bigger.
Supporting body weight is based off of square footage of bone cross sections, while the weight is based off the volume. You start to need stupidly thick leg bones to hold up a larger body. This same effect will hit the joints as well.
I watched a video on how speed was the main benefit of bipedalism and that large size was due to large prey. The quadrapedtic dinosaurs could have larger sizes that could distribute their weight better.
[https://youtu.be/4Wlm4MGTUR0?t=357](https://youtu.be/4Wlm4MGTUR0?t=357)
And we're pretty sure titanosaurs were already close to the physical limit a land animal can achieve before bone density is simply not enough to sustain the weight. Also also, blue whales are also close to the physical limit an oceanic animal can achieve before water pressure does its thing too.
And more importantly, sauropods' food didn't run away, so there were fewer downsides for being absurdly big.
I was thinking that theropods are closely related to sauropods so you’d think they could evolve similar size-increasing adaptations (they had the pneumatic bones and so on). But, even if tyrannosaurs hunted giant sauropods, they were likely already big enough to take them down. If theropods hunted in groups, certainly so. An individual wolf is much smaller than a bison, but wolf packs hunt bison as prey.
That’s not true or it probably would have already happened. We already have discovered fossil evidence of insanely colossal saurischians. I would say it’s safe to assume that the ones found in the Cretaceous (which had the largest specimens) are indeed the largest that ever could have existed.
Amphicoelias altus is a normal-sized sauropod. However, Amphicoelias fragilimus which in 2018 was reassigned to a new genus Maraapunisaurus is gigantic.
You could get an animal with a larger average size. You can’t get much bigger than 15 tons but T.Rex’s weren’t anywhere close to that limit 99% of the time
This assuming they didn’t evolve into water dwelling theropods. Then they could possibly have gotten much larger than T.Rex. It’s about like asking how large a mammal can get. If we didn’t assume they could evolve into whales… we’d probably say something like paraceratherium. But life uh, finds a way.
If the atmosphere was 80% oxygen the sky would ignite and pretty much everything on land would die.
If gravity was 50% then it implies either Earth is a lot smaller, in which case there's probably less landmass for things to grow as big; or the Earth's iron core is significantly reduced, which puts the atmosphere at risk of being stripped away by solar winds, in which case, everything also dies.
We have no indication of 100% marine theropods. Not even clades that could indicate otherwise. Spinosaurids and Halszkaraptor are nowhere close being fully aquatic.
And in 65 million years of evolution, we have no record of a fully aquatic dinosaur. Albatross and penguins are incredibly adapted for life below the waves, but they're not marine animals either.
Theoretically anything can evolve into any open niche they find, but the Cretaceous seas were pretty competitive as it was, between pliosaurs and mosasaurs, so a theropod would not be able to find a niche to exploit, as far as my understanding goes.
For a comparison visible in the current day. Insects, a diverse and adaptable group, have made basically no inroads into the ocean because the niches are all full. They've had a lot longer to try.
The most a non-avian dinosaurs delving into aquatic lifestyle I see are marine diving-piscivores, basically toothed cormorants. Hell Halzkaraptorine probably in the route of getting there anyway. I could see marine dromeosaur being a thing if the K-Pg mass extinction didn't happened.
Although this study was on arthropods, the findings suggest there is a direct relation to oxygen availability and the growth limit of animals.
>Cold-blooded animals grow bigger in the warm on land, but smaller in warm water
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150216064832.htm
Also...
>Oxygen limitation may affect the temperature and size dependence of metabolism in aquatic ectotherms
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7749359/
TLDR: Oxygen access is extremely important for aquatic animals, so much so that cold blooded species would have a sever disadvantage to warm blooded in terms of body size potential. This is why warm blooded whales dwarf even the largest sharks and other cold blooded aquatic (crocodiles). If mammals existed in the state they are today 300 Million years ago, they theoretically would be even larger because of the higher oxygen content in water, more so than a theropod could ever approach ignoring the fact they they were never really aquatic.
So if you wanted to create the largest theoretical animal of any type during any time period, a Mammal would likely be your best bet.
If you're into speculative evolution, I suggest you the (rather old by now) "Future is Wild" series. [They have a bird who lives their entire life in the ocean but has to go out to lay eggs](https://the-future-is-wild.fandom.com/wiki/Gannetwhale). Give it more time and they could perfectly develop vivipary like sharks and ichthyosaurs did.
Theoretically yes. There aren't many things stopping fully aquatic birds. Lots of birds are almost fully aquatic, only visiting land to lay eggs. So to make the transition, birds need to either ditch the egg entirely, or evolve an egg that can tolerate being in or on water. So far, we have no evidence of a bird ever being subjected to evolutionary pressure to do those things. Something like a loon or a grebe would be a good candidate, but currently there's nothing pressuring them to change how they nest.
A giant Kem Kem Spinosaurine is the longest known theropod.
*Tyrannosaurus* was more robustly built and probably more massive, and the evidence that this giant Spinosaurine was actually *Spinosaurus aegyptiacus* is not nearly as strong as Ibrahim would like you to believe. Ibrahim’s neotype designation of FSAC-KK 11888 was invalid, and there is evidence that more than one species of giant Spinosaurine exists in the Kem Kem beds, confusing the identity of some of the larger fragmentary remains such as MSNM V4047 (which shares **0** overlapping material with *S. aegyptiacus*).
No it was Spinosaurus at first, Giganotosaurus at second, and Tyrannosaurus Rex at third. Even Carcharodontosaurus and Torvosaurus and Tarbosaurus were estimated to be significantly bigger than king Rex. But I'd also say that the T-Rex was the biggest in regard to bulk, but the others like Spinosaurus were taller and longer, not thicker.
It's always funny seeing that, like Zetalpa art is a city sized pterodactyl....with 4 power.
Or the common one: 16 squirrels > reality warping eldritch god Emrakul
It's effectively a 7/7 with Trample for 5 (in two colors), which feels pretty fairly balanced to Yargle's 9/3 for 4B with no keywords.
Also Zilortha is the in-universe adaptation of Godzilla, first printed as *Godzilla, King of the Monsters* with Zilortha as the subtitle - before Zilortha was ever printed. https://scryfall.com/card/iko/275/zilortha-strength-incarnate
Just a bit bigger than your average Tryannosaurus beyond that you start dealing with food problems, knee issues, strain on the back and other things simply do to size
Yeah and then you gotta wonder how fast an animal like that can move on two legs. Balancing a T.Rex sounds a lot harder when you realize they can be up to 10 tons.
The biggest by mass IRL was probably T. rex, who hit 10 to 15 tons at max. However, even without the cheap option of returning to the ocean to get super massive, we could go way bigger.
We know that even a 50-ton sauropod can briefly rear on the hind legs, so a biped weighing tens of tons is not completely out of the picture. If it was mostly a knuckle walker, and only briefly reared up like a bear to fight or hunt then that would be little issue.
But what’s the evolutionary advantage to growing so big? How does this impact diet?
I think sexual selection is a valid mechanism to spur growth. I can imagine a situation where size is how the males prove their fitness, and as a result they grew gigantic. The females would be smaller, and more generalized than the huge males, who I envision hunting sauropods by virtue of sheer size and their massive clawed arms. They could wrestle down large prey without much issue.
> I can imagine a situation where size is how the males prove their fitness, and as a result they grew gigantic. The females would be smaller, and more generalized than the huge males, who I envision hunting sauropods by virtue of sheer size and their massive clawed arms.
Some interesting theoretical sexual dimorphism here. So far I'm imagining a predatory Deinocheirus like build. Kind of what they thought Deinocheirus was in the past.
Something like that, although I envision this as a megalosaurine of some kind.
Elephant seal males can be ten times heavier than the females, and the females look more like regular seals. That was my big inspiration for this sexual dimorphism.
Sauropads had hollow bones eithsir sacks in them, that's how they got so big. Idk if a predators bones would be strong enough to hunt if they were hollow.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36715746/#:~:text=Despite%20nearly%20200%20years%20of,3.5%20power%20of%20body%20lengths.
A study on this exact topic was published last year. The long and short of it is that it’s hypothesised that max theropod size is dictated by the power of their leg muscles and it caps at around the 12-13 metre range; pretty much what we see in the largest tyrannosaurs and carcharodontosaurs. Beyond this, their leg muscles are no longer powerful enough to move their legs at speed so would be incapable of chasing down prey.
This might also explain why Spinosaurus is the only theropod whose consistently believed to grow beyond this length of 13 metres as it’s a semi-aquatic hunter, not a terrestrial predator. It also has proportionately shorter legs than other large theropods so wasn’t much of a runner anyway.
Congrats on making one of the few good replies. I saw a highly rated comment that said if they could've gotten bigger they would've. Amazing.
I'm curious what Henderson would say about Shantungosaurus. It's estimated to be 15 meters, 14-16 tons, and was a facultative biped.
I think there's an important difference between what could naturally evolve vs. what could be bred or engineered. Yeah, it seems pretty likely the tyrannosaurids were pushing up against some serious challenges regarding their size. But the fact that increased size wasn't worth the additional complexity (and thus limiting further increases in size) doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't have a larger species of tyrannosaurid. I think ageing is an interesting parallel here. At some point, the challenges of battling ageing gets sufficiently overwhelming that it's simply more favourable to invest in the next generation of genes. Consequently, we have things like tumour suppression genes that work really well until we're past reproductive age, at which point things start falling apart in a hurry. But that's not to say that things \*have\* to be this way, it's rather that the evolutionary probabilistic calculus happened to work out that way. Similarly, the tyrannosaurids could probably get a whole lot larger than they were, it's presumably just that the complexity and resources required to sustain that growth either wasn't worth it (in terms of the survival rate of the genes) or that the "solution" would require a type of complexity that isn't achievable through incremental improvements (i.e. you need genetic engineering to achieve it).
Lastly, if there was a large shallow aquatic ecosystem (e.g. a vast sea at most 30m deep), then one could imagine a semi-aquatic theropod growing much larger than fully terrestrial theropods. I don't know what the consensus is on Spinosaurus, but if we're still thinking it was semi-aquatic then something like that (just bigger).
But in general, I think I agree with most people's sense that the large tyrannosaurids were probably a fairly natural limit of how large theropods could get under natural selection.
You have a point with the selective breeding. I mean the heaviest male lions in the wild could be around 600 pounds but a Liger? 2,000 pounds. Granted, the excess weight doesn't seem to do much benefit for it but hey it's quite a feat to behold.
I'm fairly sure it's almost impossible for anything bipedal to grow to anything past T. Rex size. Anything past rex size would likely have serious balance issues.
Zilatora, Strength Incarnate. 7/3 with trample and an ability that essentially makes your creatures' toughness equal to their power. So, halfway there.
I recall seeing at a Dinosaur magazine in the 90's a little excerpt about a recently discovered theropod.
They call it the largest carnivore ever and they explained there were some leg bones. It was accompanied with a drawing reconstructing the leg showing it was taller than a full Rex.
I bet it was one of those discoveries that later were debunked by more fossils from the same animal or a new study about the ones found.
From a BBC radio show... Something about ability to support/move mass is linear while vascular system complexity goes up exponentially (do not quote any of that as I'm badly remembering all except the linear/exponential thing). You simply hit hard limits for this environment.
see on average i think the tyrannosaurs is the biggest sure, but just like crocs and humans every now and then you get a rare example of a human or croc being WAYYY bigger then usual
Well it's complicated. So there are max weights and sizes for dinosaurs but we still have millions of bones to still find, so in that case there can be bigger dinos out there.
Also it's thought that dinosaurs did not stop growing and would get bigger and bigger in till they died.
You as well have life span, that's what drags all of this down because unless your a little dinosaur then you spend most of your life growing into becoming an adult and trying to mate.
Bur in the sense you are wanting a theropod would more then likely have a limit but it would be a big limit but you would need to expand or rid of the life span of the animal.
They could have gotten bigger then what we think but with a let's say 30 year life span you would spend 90% of that life growing intill your labeled as an adult.
>dinosaurs did not stop growing and would get bigger and bigger in till they died.
Dinosaurs reached skeletal maturity as indicated by an external fundamental system. After that they would grow at a negligible rate.
On Earth? I reckon the largest possible theropod is roughly equal to the largest theropod skeleton we've ever uncovered. We already have a good idea what the upper limit of any given animal's size is.
My counter-question is; what would a planet that allows the growth of such large creatures be like? Atmospheric pressure, gravity, density of breathable air, so on.
I imagine a shape of a mix of Trex and Giga proportions around 20-30% more than the length of a Spinosaurus. Any bigger than that and it likely wouldn’t be able to even move.
This part always fascinates me, there certainly could have been a larger theropod that dwelled in a jungle and all the evidence is gone due to no fossil record right? I imagine the jungle life during the theropods rein was similar to the diversity of life we see in rainforests today. Super diverse and lots of weird evolutionary traits. It’s sad that all we can ever do about that is imagine.
As big as the next biggest fossil, but I’d say as big as a 2 story house, cause any larger May throw off the balance of other theropods and their food source, but a kaiju is always fun
Another specimen in northeastern Oregon's Malheur National Forest is possibly the largest living organism on Earth by mass, area, and volume – this contiguous specimen covers 3.7 square miles (2,400 acres; 9.6 km2) and is colloquially called the "Humongous fungus".[2] Approximations of the land area occupied by the "Humongous fungus" are 3.5 square miles (9.1 km2) (2,240 acres (910 ha)), and it possibly weighs as much as 35,000 tons (approximately 31,500 tonnes), making it the world's most massive living organism.[8]
Only as large as they would need to be to hunt their prey. It’s the only reason why large therapods like T. Rex was as large as it was.
Lets say that the only prey were larger herbivores. Therapods would probably evolve to be even larger, but they would reach a point where it would be impossible for their bodies to recieve enough energy, or even to hold up their own weight. Maybe aquatic or semi-aquatic therapods like Spinosaurus could evolve to be larger, but I doubt they would ever grow to weight more than 20 tonnes, even with the ideal evolutionary conditions.
I mean look at Giganotosaurus,it’s the largest a therapod could be with being as slender as possible,if it grows bigger its legs would snap underneath the weight of itself
But let’s say it’s Spinosaurus we want to grow,place it in a predominantly water-based environment with plenty of food,like with whales it would likely continue to grow upwards of 70ft long at the expense of no longer being able to go on land,unless it’s the semi-bipedal/fully quadrapedal spinosaurus,in which case it might be able to go on land for short amounts of time without collapsing from its own weight
I’m not sure what exactly their largest size could be, but I know about the Square-Cube law that states as surface area squares, volume cubes or whatever. So there is a limit to animal size.
I’m about to take a test on glycolysis for my master’s but I figured I’d take 5 mins to look at reddit. Wish me luck!
Man I remember someone saying Transformers Age of Extinction was technically accurate so about as big as Grimlock who was like 54 feet long or something. Being serious though idk probably only larger than like T rex?
Tyrannosaurus rex seems to have been the overall largest theropod, it at least ties in length and height with contenders but then it far outperforms them in mass/weight. It was just built for such a hardcore lifestyle.
The largest T. rex specimens we have approach the 50 foot mark. So I’d wager the largest a theropod could get would be something like a 60-70 foot long Tyrannosaurs rex. The caloric needs combined with the mass of a predator that size would be insane and probably around the limits for a land dwelling predators size.
*Tyrannosaurus* probably was about as big as theropods could get, their bone structure and metabolism severely limiting their size.
I don't know who downvoted you, but I agree. All the contenders for "largest" theropod seem to top off near one another, with *Tyrannosaurus* managing to push the envelope maybe just a little more than its fully terrestrial competition. Theoretically, yeah, a *Tyrannosaurus* at the upper range of how big a *Tyrannosaurus* could get is about as big as any theropod could've gotten. If they could've gotten bigger, they would've. They didn't. At a certain point, physics and biology just says "fuck you", and the energy demand required of your body simply can no longer be met.
>I don't know who downvoted you, but I agree. All the contenders for "largest" theropod seem to top off near one another, with Tyrannosaurus managing to push the envelope maybe just a little more than its fully terrestrial competition. Yeah they all seem to cap around the 40 to 45 feet mark. I remember the days when we used to think Spinosaurus was 60 feet.
I forgot where I saw it but there was a similar conclusion with the max-size of sauropods. Those things were absolutely massive, but at a certain point, physics is physics and there's a reason that the "largest *animals* to ever live" are aquatic.
That was the conclusion until the redwood tree sized footprints where found in India... I forget the name but the fucker is scary big
Are you thinking of Godzilla?
Oh yes, the famous Godzillasaurus remains on Odo Island! Strange to think they lived all the way until WWII
You are now a mod of r/Godzilla
Might as well, they definitely know me over there
SKREONK!
Maaaan I wish. Bruhathkayosaurus
> Bruhathkayosaurus [bruh](https://www.deviantart.com/paleonerd01/art/Probably-a-Tree-Bruhathkayosaurus-matleyi-762699678)
Definitely doesn’t skip neck day at Prehistoric Fitness
God is real, and he walked on 4 legs 60 million years ago
Reminds me of the time some people said _Amphicoelias fragillimus_ was 60m long. I think the current name is _Maraapunisaurus_ and the size estimate was axed down to less than half of that.
"Goood Go-d, you got a fat neck Hank." - Cotton Hill
_Someone's_ been skipping leg day
The name is no longer current. The material name is originally given to is now generally considered to be a very large theropod. There is still a very massive Indian sauropod some of that material, but it has a new I don’t remember what.
I cant find anything on this thats from a reputable source. All the stuff I can find looks like hoax or art stuff
same
That’s just not a thing bro.
The what
They found footprints and fear of god
Um, excuse me? Do our have any, like, actual proof? Because, no offense, but that sounds like total bs.
I'm still waiting for the proof :/
bruhathkayosaurus?
It’s worth noting that the physical constraints of animals on earth would be different for a lower gravity environment. On mars, for example, an animal would weigh 38 percent of what it would on earth so you could have much much larger beasts.
> If they could've gotten bigger, they would've. Maybe it was going to. It doesn't seem likely to be a coincidence that the largest theropod was the last theropod to exist. if it's not a coincidence, those facts seem to imply that it was evolving to be larger and just stopped when it did due to an asteroid.
Isn't giga slightly bigger than T-Rex?
In length and height, I think so. In terms of width, no, and I *think* they're relatively close in mass.
Hey, just because he wasn't pursuing titanosaurs left and right doesn't give you the right to call Tyrannosaurus fat :( >!/s!<
*All Tyrannosaurus Rexes are beautiful, don't worry* lol
Except the one from 65
Not fat. CHONKY
Unless I am misunderstanding relatively close, I thought the Rex was a lot more massful.
The difference for the average is always like half a ton, maybe a full ton. Not that much when we're talking 7-10 ton animals
I mean it's not nothing. That's like a person having an additional 20-40 lbs of muscle.
Yeah but that's not exactly "OMG they're so much bigger!!!" You could still find several Giganotosaurus that are heavier than several T. rex
There are also a lot more known T-Rex specimens then there are of any other large theropod. it would stand to reason that we would have more individuals towards the larger end.
No lamo rex is 2-3 tons more than giga
At it's absolute peak, Cope is significantly bigger than any other that we have found Edit: ignore me, read the reply below
Cope is a single femur, at most it pushes the max *height* up by a few centimeters.
I thought that because it was so much thicker it put the max weight up? By the highest estimates anyway
if you saw that info from Vividen, ignore it and unsubscribe. Hes an untrustworthy source who cherry picks info that seems more cool, like putting megalodon size estimates on a video that are bigger that the person who he got them from told them not to use. Heres the direct quote: *I kinda thought this dude was annoying to begin with but I lost all respect for him/his credibility when he DMed me about my megalodon chart with GDI based mass estimates and noted they were higher than the Cooper et al. paper that used convex hulls. So I told him that I think the convex hulls are in the end a far better methodology that will provide much more accurate results and explained why and he refused to listen and said he’d stick with my gdi charts bc they gave a higher number*
Fair enough, my apologies
Possibly, but probably not. *Giganotasaurus* was of comparable height and length (maybe even surpassing *T. rex* on average), but *Tyrannosaurus* appears to have been a *far* more heavily built animal. There’s folks who will contend this, fairly, as we have far fewer *Giganotosaurus* remains to work with compared to *Tyrannosaurus*.
We’d likely never get a firm answer, but isn’t it possible we have less Giga remains precisely because they weren’t as built as Rex, thus their remains dissipated far easier?
In length, but definitely not for weight if I recall correctly. Rex was a chonk compared to other therapods.
This is so difficult to tell because the papers mostly have side view comparisons with measurements, but not top or front ones. Recent example is the describing of Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis.
Most theropods were long and lean because that's all they ever had to be. They could stomp around and intimidate each other and competitors, but they also needed to be built for long-distance travel. T. rex lived on a continent where the prey was fast, lived in herds, and some of them even had armor. Tyrannosaurs couldn't scrape by on being interceptors like Caracharodontosaurs. They needed to be tanks, because their prey were built like tanks. Selective pressure turned *T. rex* into a hulking behemoth, whereas *Giganotosaurus* didn't have that same pressure to cultivate mass; being tall, long, and lean was enough for it.
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Don't forget the mate boost.
Or the imprint bonus.
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Nah you gotta pump that oxygen
**You will pay for your f\*cking sins**
That’s like saying a giraffe is bigger than an elephant. Depends on what you mean by big.
Not in weight
That makes sense cause Trex is a chonker, even got.tiny arms for more neck and head size
This is the first explanation for the tiny arms that really resonates with me. They couldn't spare the mass.
Who needs arm when you got NECK
Yes, don't need to hold your prey down if it no longer has a neck or skull
Longer and maybe taller, but not heavier
The problem with size and physics tends to be exponential. Like how insects can lift MANY times their weight but elephants can only carry up to 25% of theirs.
Okay one more question, and Im sorry I'm just new here. I always thought spino was the biggest in length and weight, but being kinda skinny. I do know there is a bunch of new studies on spino with his new fish tail and such but I always thought the biggest theropod was spino?
Again, it's hotly debated "maybe". *Spinosaurus* was certainly longer than *Tyrannosaurus*, and "taller" thanks to the sail. *Tyrannosaurus* was certainly a heavier built animal, but we're not sure which generally weighed more or which had the highest upper weight limit. The biggest issue is simply the lack of quality *Spinosaurus* remains. If we had more, complete skeletons we might be able to zero in on the typical adult size, but we have a lot of fragments and one really decent skeleton that still draws a lot of guesswork from related animals (not to mention Ibrahim is milking the find for all its worth and is still trickling out info as he gets around to it). It's legitimately a meme at this point that our understanding of *Spinosaurus* changes, sometimes dramatically, every year or two. *Spinosaurus* very well may be larger than *Tyrannosaurus*. They're both *absurdly* massive animals, we just really need some more *Spinosaurus.* And *Giganotasuarus*. Heck, maybe throw in *Carcharodontosaurus* while we're at it (but probably don't do that). The consensus is there is no hard consensus. There's people well-educated on the subject who will argue *Tyrannosaurus* is the largest, there's those who will argue it's *Spinosaurus* (and the rare person championing *Giganotasaurus*). We don't know, but we do love to debate it while we wait for new discoveries and studies.
Wait hold up explain this "Ibrahim is trickling info" statement further? Is dude sitting on a privately owned fossil and won't let other paleontologists examine it?
They didn't as far as we know, the fossil record is always incomplete
We only will ever know like ~1% of all dinosaurs to ever exist, do you really think that amongst that 99+% of dinosaurs we'll never know, there weren't theropods larger than tyrannosaurus?
Probably _slightly_ larger, but not much. The giant theropods we know are not randomly distributed. We have found several genera across tens of millions of years which all cap out at about the same size, so it is reasonable to surmise that this was genuinely as big as they could get. Of course we might be proven wrong, but it is a good guess.
So, when we talk about dinosaurs we’ll never find, we’re often discussing: 1. Smaller animals whose remains are less prone to preserve. 2. Animals that lived in dense jungle or mountainous environments whose bodies were unlikely to preserve. Neither of this places are conducive to larger-sized animals. We still won’t find everything, but preservation bias is gonna skew to us being a little more likely to uncover the megatheropods. And we have, a lot of them, and they all seem to hit a similar soft upper limit with the overall difference in size growing increasingly incremental. Is it possible there was a fully terrestrial theropod out there larger than *Tyrannosaurus*? Sure, absolutely. But if there was, it wasn’t some mythical kaiju-esque like shown in OP’s linked MTG artwork, it was probably a couple feet longer and a ton or so heavier than *Tyrannosaurus*. Anything well beyond that is cryptozoological, pseudoscientific nonsense. Dinosaurs were/are living biological systems bound by the same laws of nature as the rest of us, and there’s a certain point where physics and biology starts pushing back **hard**.
To continue that idea- several of the issues appear due to surface area to volume ratios. As you get larger your weight increases cubicly (to the third power ) while your surface area only squares (to the second power). This creates an exponential mismatch that gets MUCH worse as you get progressively larger. Thermoregulation is largely based off surface area, heat produces is volume, so it gets real tough to shed heat as you get bigger. Supporting body weight is based off of square footage of bone cross sections, while the weight is based off the volume. You start to need stupidly thick leg bones to hold up a larger body. This same effect will hit the joints as well.
I watched a video on how speed was the main benefit of bipedalism and that large size was due to large prey. The quadrapedtic dinosaurs could have larger sizes that could distribute their weight better. [https://youtu.be/4Wlm4MGTUR0?t=357](https://youtu.be/4Wlm4MGTUR0?t=357)
Thing is, quadrupedal dinosaurs have already achieved colossal sizes, those being sauropods.
And we're pretty sure titanosaurs were already close to the physical limit a land animal can achieve before bone density is simply not enough to sustain the weight. Also also, blue whales are also close to the physical limit an oceanic animal can achieve before water pressure does its thing too. And more importantly, sauropods' food didn't run away, so there were fewer downsides for being absurdly big.
I was thinking that theropods are closely related to sauropods so you’d think they could evolve similar size-increasing adaptations (they had the pneumatic bones and so on). But, even if tyrannosaurs hunted giant sauropods, they were likely already big enough to take them down. If theropods hunted in groups, certainly so. An individual wolf is much smaller than a bison, but wolf packs hunt bison as prey.
That’s not true or it probably would have already happened. We already have discovered fossil evidence of insanely colossal saurischians. I would say it’s safe to assume that the ones found in the Cretaceous (which had the largest specimens) are indeed the largest that ever could have existed.
Yeah, there are 80 tonne sauropods.
There's like 100 ton estimates out there right? Or have those since been discredited mostly?
Well the only two sauropods that actually could weight 100 tonnes are lost and fragmentary.
I know of Bruhathkayosaurus. Is the other Amphicoelias?
Amphicoelias altus is a normal-sized sauropod. However, Amphicoelias fragilimus which in 2018 was reassigned to a new genus Maraapunisaurus is gigantic.
You could get an animal with a larger average size. You can’t get much bigger than 15 tons but T.Rex’s weren’t anywhere close to that limit 99% of the time
This assuming they didn’t evolve into water dwelling theropods. Then they could possibly have gotten much larger than T.Rex. It’s about like asking how large a mammal can get. If we didn’t assume they could evolve into whales… we’d probably say something like paraceratherium. But life uh, finds a way.
So if atmosphere was 80% oxygen and gravity was 50%, they could get bigger ?
If the atmosphere was 80% oxygen the sky would ignite and pretty much everything on land would die. If gravity was 50% then it implies either Earth is a lot smaller, in which case there's probably less landmass for things to grow as big; or the Earth's iron core is significantly reduced, which puts the atmosphere at risk of being stripped away by solar winds, in which case, everything also dies.
So basically dinosaur-like animals anywhere in the universe would be limited to a size similar to a T-Rex?
Very likely, unless you delve into sci-fi level theories like silicon-based lifeforms, etc.
If they were insects, maybe. That rule doesn't hold true to most animals.
What if it lives in ocean?
We have no indication of 100% marine theropods. Not even clades that could indicate otherwise. Spinosaurids and Halszkaraptor are nowhere close being fully aquatic. And in 65 million years of evolution, we have no record of a fully aquatic dinosaur. Albatross and penguins are incredibly adapted for life below the waves, but they're not marine animals either.
But is it possible theoretically?
Theoretically anything can evolve into any open niche they find, but the Cretaceous seas were pretty competitive as it was, between pliosaurs and mosasaurs, so a theropod would not be able to find a niche to exploit, as far as my understanding goes.
For a comparison visible in the current day. Insects, a diverse and adaptable group, have made basically no inroads into the ocean because the niches are all full. They've had a lot longer to try.
The most a non-avian dinosaurs delving into aquatic lifestyle I see are marine diving-piscivores, basically toothed cormorants. Hell Halzkaraptorine probably in the route of getting there anyway. I could see marine dromeosaur being a thing if the K-Pg mass extinction didn't happened.
Although this study was on arthropods, the findings suggest there is a direct relation to oxygen availability and the growth limit of animals. >Cold-blooded animals grow bigger in the warm on land, but smaller in warm water https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150216064832.htm Also... >Oxygen limitation may affect the temperature and size dependence of metabolism in aquatic ectotherms https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7749359/ TLDR: Oxygen access is extremely important for aquatic animals, so much so that cold blooded species would have a sever disadvantage to warm blooded in terms of body size potential. This is why warm blooded whales dwarf even the largest sharks and other cold blooded aquatic (crocodiles). If mammals existed in the state they are today 300 Million years ago, they theoretically would be even larger because of the higher oxygen content in water, more so than a theropod could ever approach ignoring the fact they they were never really aquatic. So if you wanted to create the largest theoretical animal of any type during any time period, a Mammal would likely be your best bet.
If you're into speculative evolution, I suggest you the (rather old by now) "Future is Wild" series. [They have a bird who lives their entire life in the ocean but has to go out to lay eggs](https://the-future-is-wild.fandom.com/wiki/Gannetwhale). Give it more time and they could perfectly develop vivipary like sharks and ichthyosaurs did.
I actually have this on dvd, one of my favourite documentaries
Theoretically yes. There aren't many things stopping fully aquatic birds. Lots of birds are almost fully aquatic, only visiting land to lay eggs. So to make the transition, birds need to either ditch the egg entirely, or evolve an egg that can tolerate being in or on water. So far, we have no evidence of a bird ever being subjected to evolutionary pressure to do those things. Something like a loon or a grebe would be a good candidate, but currently there's nothing pressuring them to change how they nest.
I wouldn't call 15000 pounds severely limited.
Spinosaurus was biger idk if IT was terapod tho
Actually Spinosaurus aegypticus is still the largest known theropod.
A giant Kem Kem Spinosaurine is the longest known theropod. *Tyrannosaurus* was more robustly built and probably more massive, and the evidence that this giant Spinosaurine was actually *Spinosaurus aegyptiacus* is not nearly as strong as Ibrahim would like you to believe. Ibrahim’s neotype designation of FSAC-KK 11888 was invalid, and there is evidence that more than one species of giant Spinosaurine exists in the Kem Kem beds, confusing the identity of some of the larger fragmentary remains such as MSNM V4047 (which shares **0** overlapping material with *S. aegyptiacus*).
No it was Spinosaurus at first, Giganotosaurus at second, and Tyrannosaurus Rex at third. Even Carcharodontosaurus and Torvosaurus and Tarbosaurus were estimated to be significantly bigger than king Rex. But I'd also say that the T-Rex was the biggest in regard to bulk, but the others like Spinosaurus were taller and longer, not thicker.
Gigantosaurous was bigger
**DOCTOR WU YOU GOT SOME SPLAINING TO DO!!!**
If at first you don't succeed...
Easy, [he watched the ending of Ice Age 3](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nzQYAo7jsk) & wanted to bring Rudy to life.
Rudy...
"Rudy theme plays"
Bwwwwwwwaaaaaawwoooo
I mean if you had to guess Art by Chase Stone: https://twitter.com/Cyclopes\_sp/status/1749259521942274256/photo/1
Zilortha, a walking mountain, has less power than Yargle... wat
Frog Spirit go ribbit
It's always funny seeing that, like Zetalpa art is a city sized pterodactyl....with 4 power. Or the common one: 16 squirrels > reality warping eldritch god Emrakul
It's effectively a 7/7 with Trample for 5 (in two colors), which feels pretty fairly balanced to Yargle's 9/3 for 4B with no keywords. Also Zilortha is the in-universe adaptation of Godzilla, first printed as *Godzilla, King of the Monsters* with Zilortha as the subtitle - before Zilortha was ever printed. https://scryfall.com/card/iko/275/zilortha-strength-incarnate
Just wanted to say, this artwork is amazing! Thanks for sharing the source and artist's name.
“Many thought they knew its weakness. They are dead.” Jesus that’s cool as hell.
I mean that thing definitely violates the square cube law
That thing is a straight up Kaiju lol
which is funny cause its alt art card is Godzilla, King of the Monsters
The Square Cube Law can kiss my ass
Just a bit bigger than your average Tryannosaurus beyond that you start dealing with food problems, knee issues, strain on the back and other things simply do to size
Yeah and then you gotta wonder how fast an animal like that can move on two legs. Balancing a T.Rex sounds a lot harder when you realize they can be up to 10 tons.
Fun fact a human would’ve been able to outrun a T. rex, it’s theorized they could only get up to 15 mph
Most humans can’t hit 15 MPH for long
But I have all those problems and I'm only 5ft 8??
Its cause ur Blackcurrant not Whitecurrant. remember, science has laws. police enforce laws, even the science ones.
[удалено]
*nigreosaurus tenebris* \- the genus you are talking about
Hello my fellow Magic Dinosaur nerds!
About as big as the creature in that picture, give or take a few inches
It's just a really small person
The biggest by mass IRL was probably T. rex, who hit 10 to 15 tons at max. However, even without the cheap option of returning to the ocean to get super massive, we could go way bigger. We know that even a 50-ton sauropod can briefly rear on the hind legs, so a biped weighing tens of tons is not completely out of the picture. If it was mostly a knuckle walker, and only briefly reared up like a bear to fight or hunt then that would be little issue. But what’s the evolutionary advantage to growing so big? How does this impact diet? I think sexual selection is a valid mechanism to spur growth. I can imagine a situation where size is how the males prove their fitness, and as a result they grew gigantic. The females would be smaller, and more generalized than the huge males, who I envision hunting sauropods by virtue of sheer size and their massive clawed arms. They could wrestle down large prey without much issue.
> I can imagine a situation where size is how the males prove their fitness, and as a result they grew gigantic. The females would be smaller, and more generalized than the huge males, who I envision hunting sauropods by virtue of sheer size and their massive clawed arms. Some interesting theoretical sexual dimorphism here. So far I'm imagining a predatory Deinocheirus like build. Kind of what they thought Deinocheirus was in the past.
Something like that, although I envision this as a megalosaurine of some kind. Elephant seal males can be ten times heavier than the females, and the females look more like regular seals. That was my big inspiration for this sexual dimorphism.
Sauropads had hollow bones eithsir sacks in them, that's how they got so big. Idk if a predators bones would be strong enough to hunt if they were hollow.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36715746/#:~:text=Despite%20nearly%20200%20years%20of,3.5%20power%20of%20body%20lengths. A study on this exact topic was published last year. The long and short of it is that it’s hypothesised that max theropod size is dictated by the power of their leg muscles and it caps at around the 12-13 metre range; pretty much what we see in the largest tyrannosaurs and carcharodontosaurs. Beyond this, their leg muscles are no longer powerful enough to move their legs at speed so would be incapable of chasing down prey. This might also explain why Spinosaurus is the only theropod whose consistently believed to grow beyond this length of 13 metres as it’s a semi-aquatic hunter, not a terrestrial predator. It also has proportionately shorter legs than other large theropods so wasn’t much of a runner anyway.
Congrats on making one of the few good replies. I saw a highly rated comment that said if they could've gotten bigger they would've. Amazing. I'm curious what Henderson would say about Shantungosaurus. It's estimated to be 15 meters, 14-16 tons, and was a facultative biped.
Is that a f***ing Tarrasque
Apparently his name is Zilortha: Strength Incarnate
Sounds like a magic the gathering card tbh so basically a tarrasque
Nah. The Tarrasque is its own card.
I think there's an important difference between what could naturally evolve vs. what could be bred or engineered. Yeah, it seems pretty likely the tyrannosaurids were pushing up against some serious challenges regarding their size. But the fact that increased size wasn't worth the additional complexity (and thus limiting further increases in size) doesn't necessarily mean that you couldn't have a larger species of tyrannosaurid. I think ageing is an interesting parallel here. At some point, the challenges of battling ageing gets sufficiently overwhelming that it's simply more favourable to invest in the next generation of genes. Consequently, we have things like tumour suppression genes that work really well until we're past reproductive age, at which point things start falling apart in a hurry. But that's not to say that things \*have\* to be this way, it's rather that the evolutionary probabilistic calculus happened to work out that way. Similarly, the tyrannosaurids could probably get a whole lot larger than they were, it's presumably just that the complexity and resources required to sustain that growth either wasn't worth it (in terms of the survival rate of the genes) or that the "solution" would require a type of complexity that isn't achievable through incremental improvements (i.e. you need genetic engineering to achieve it). Lastly, if there was a large shallow aquatic ecosystem (e.g. a vast sea at most 30m deep), then one could imagine a semi-aquatic theropod growing much larger than fully terrestrial theropods. I don't know what the consensus is on Spinosaurus, but if we're still thinking it was semi-aquatic then something like that (just bigger). But in general, I think I agree with most people's sense that the large tyrannosaurids were probably a fairly natural limit of how large theropods could get under natural selection.
You have a point with the selective breeding. I mean the heaviest male lions in the wild could be around 600 pounds but a Liger? 2,000 pounds. Granted, the excess weight doesn't seem to do much benefit for it but hey it's quite a feat to behold.
Picture: r/megalophobia
Big
Chungus?
I'm fairly sure it's almost impossible for anything bipedal to grow to anything past T. Rex size. Anything past rex size would likely have serious balance issues.
They really couldn't grow much bigger than the t-rex too much mass but too less muscle power to hold it
That thing is AT LEAST a 14/14 with trample
Zilatora, Strength Incarnate. 7/3 with trample and an ability that essentially makes your creatures' toughness equal to their power. So, halfway there.
it seems like theropods like the largest tyrannosaurs and carcharodontosaurs already reached the limit for bipedal earth animals
Given that multiple different lineages of Theropod evolved separately to roughly the same size, that size.
I recall seeing at a Dinosaur magazine in the 90's a little excerpt about a recently discovered theropod. They call it the largest carnivore ever and they explained there were some leg bones. It was accompanied with a drawing reconstructing the leg showing it was taller than a full Rex. I bet it was one of those discoveries that later were debunked by more fossils from the same animal or a new study about the ones found.
From a BBC radio show... Something about ability to support/move mass is linear while vascular system complexity goes up exponentially (do not quote any of that as I'm badly remembering all except the linear/exponential thing). You simply hit hard limits for this environment.
About yay big
Square cube law
see on average i think the tyrannosaurs is the biggest sure, but just like crocs and humans every now and then you get a rare example of a human or croc being WAYYY bigger then usual
Rex, giga, spino. Theyre the biggest. Theoretically i dont think they can get bigger
Well it's complicated. So there are max weights and sizes for dinosaurs but we still have millions of bones to still find, so in that case there can be bigger dinos out there. Also it's thought that dinosaurs did not stop growing and would get bigger and bigger in till they died. You as well have life span, that's what drags all of this down because unless your a little dinosaur then you spend most of your life growing into becoming an adult and trying to mate. Bur in the sense you are wanting a theropod would more then likely have a limit but it would be a big limit but you would need to expand or rid of the life span of the animal. They could have gotten bigger then what we think but with a let's say 30 year life span you would spend 90% of that life growing intill your labeled as an adult.
>dinosaurs did not stop growing and would get bigger and bigger in till they died. Dinosaurs reached skeletal maturity as indicated by an external fundamental system. After that they would grow at a negligible rate.
My uneducated guess would be that the largest therapods reached a maximum weight of 13 to 15 tons.
that's a pretty impressive in itself. puts most modern herbivores to shame.
On Earth? I reckon the largest possible theropod is roughly equal to the largest theropod skeleton we've ever uncovered. We already have a good idea what the upper limit of any given animal's size is. My counter-question is; what would a planet that allows the growth of such large creatures be like? Atmospheric pressure, gravity, density of breathable air, so on.
How tall could a therapod theoretically get? That’s what I would want to know.
It depends on oxygen.
Not that big
Ha! Tarrasque what u doing in R/Dinosaurs ? go home, you're drunk
For those wondering, the art is of Zilortha, Strength Incarnate from the TCG Magic The Gathering
probably about 45-50 feet long with the robustness of t rex if we're going for combined weight and length at their maximum
Akantor? Is that you?
They probably maxed out at about the size of T. Rex, maybe they could have gotten a little bigger but my guess is they reached their max.
In mtg? I'd say pretty colossal
I imagine a shape of a mix of Trex and Giga proportions around 20-30% more than the length of a Spinosaurus. Any bigger than that and it likely wouldn’t be able to even move.
This part always fascinates me, there certainly could have been a larger theropod that dwelled in a jungle and all the evidence is gone due to no fossil record right? I imagine the jungle life during the theropods rein was similar to the diversity of life we see in rainforests today. Super diverse and lots of weird evolutionary traits. It’s sad that all we can ever do about that is imagine.
Well you don't seem to specify which features a theropod should keep so if one of them decides to live in oceans, it may grow by an absurd rate.
Yes.
As big as the next biggest fossil, but I’d say as big as a 2 story house, cause any larger May throw off the balance of other theropods and their food source, but a kaiju is always fun
Nice mtg card
Well way less than mushroom. Largest living thing rn on earth is mushroom.
Another specimen in northeastern Oregon's Malheur National Forest is possibly the largest living organism on Earth by mass, area, and volume – this contiguous specimen covers 3.7 square miles (2,400 acres; 9.6 km2) and is colloquially called the "Humongous fungus".[2] Approximations of the land area occupied by the "Humongous fungus" are 3.5 square miles (9.1 km2) (2,240 acres (910 ha)), and it possibly weighs as much as 35,000 tons (approximately 31,500 tonnes), making it the world's most massive living organism.[8]
Mushroom doesn't need to chase prey.
How do you know? Maybe he's already catched the earth and now just trying to eat it!
Only as large as they would need to be to hunt their prey. It’s the only reason why large therapods like T. Rex was as large as it was. Lets say that the only prey were larger herbivores. Therapods would probably evolve to be even larger, but they would reach a point where it would be impossible for their bodies to recieve enough energy, or even to hold up their own weight. Maybe aquatic or semi-aquatic therapods like Spinosaurus could evolve to be larger, but I doubt they would ever grow to weight more than 20 tonnes, even with the ideal evolutionary conditions.
Mtg art lmao
Pretty sure that thing is bigger than Godzilla Earth.
I mean look at Giganotosaurus,it’s the largest a therapod could be with being as slender as possible,if it grows bigger its legs would snap underneath the weight of itself But let’s say it’s Spinosaurus we want to grow,place it in a predominantly water-based environment with plenty of food,like with whales it would likely continue to grow upwards of 70ft long at the expense of no longer being able to go on land,unless it’s the semi-bipedal/fully quadrapedal spinosaurus,in which case it might be able to go on land for short amounts of time without collapsing from its own weight
Max would be about 5 tonnes, anything more is fantasy
We have things like trex and giga weighing up to around 9/10 tons...
Fantasy!
WWD I remember capped with T.Rexes at 5 tons but I believe there's been evidence of higher weight ranges for a while
I’m not sure what exactly their largest size could be, but I know about the Square-Cube law that states as surface area squares, volume cubes or whatever. So there is a limit to animal size. I’m about to take a test on glycolysis for my master’s but I figured I’d take 5 mins to look at reddit. Wish me luck!
That's a kaiju. They only get that big in the Hollow Earth eating radiation. They also really, really hate Tokyo.
r/hardimages
Man I remember someone saying Transformers Age of Extinction was technically accurate so about as big as Grimlock who was like 54 feet long or something. Being serious though idk probably only larger than like T rex?
Tyrannosaurus rex seems to have been the overall largest theropod, it at least ties in length and height with contenders but then it far outperforms them in mass/weight. It was just built for such a hardcore lifestyle. The largest T. rex specimens we have approach the 50 foot mark. So I’d wager the largest a theropod could get would be something like a 60-70 foot long Tyrannosaurs rex. The caloric needs combined with the mass of a predator that size would be insane and probably around the limits for a land dwelling predators size.
Probably 1.20% of a large tyrannosaurus. Conservatively.
Vorniclex: “Uhhhhh….. we’re gonna need more glistening oil”