Dinosaurs Big and Small

DINOSAURS BIG and Small

Everyone knows, some dinosaurs were BIG! How big? One of the biggest of all dinosaurs was the huge beast calledDiplodocus.

You are probably about 4 feet tall, more or less. From the tip of its snout to the end of its tail, a Diplodocuswas 89 feet long. That's longer than 22 kids laid out, head tofoot. A kid weighs about 75 pounds. Diplodocus weighed about 24, 000 pounds-as much as 320 kids together!

The blue whales that swim in the oceanstoday are the largest animals ever. But the largest animals that have ever lived on land werea group of dinosaurs called the sauropods. Diplodocus is onetype of sauropod. All sauropods were plant eaters. They had small heads, longnecks and tails, and four strong legs.

How do we know how big a sauropod was? If we have enough bones from a dinosaur's skeleton, it is not hard to measure how long the animal was. Butfiguring out how much a dinosaur weighed is not so easy. You can weigh yourself on a scale. No one can put asauropod on a scale. And even if we could, we have onlythe fossil bones to go on. We cannot know exactly howheavy a dinosaur was. Scientists can only study the skeletonand make a good guess about how much fat and musclethe living animal might have had.

One of the longest sauropods ever found is the giganticSeismosaurus. It was more than 130 feet long. A school busis about 30 feet long. Seismosaurus was longer than 4 schoolbuses parked end to end. Brachiosaurus was a sauropod with thick, sturdy bones. It was one of the heaviest dinosaurs. Brachiosaurus's front legs were longer than its hind legs. It held its neck and head high. It could nibble on leavesat the tops of the tallest trees.