Giant Dinosaur Bird Discovered

Cyclist110 writes "The BBC has the story of the discovery, in Inner Mongolia, of a Dinosaur bird twice the size of a man and weighing in at over 3000 lbs. From the article: 'Chinese researchers uncovered the fossilised remains of the flightless giant in the Erlian basin in Inner Mongolia. The researchers had originally thought they had found the bones of a tyrannosaur — the group of dinosaurs to which T. rex belongs — due to their large size.'"

Re:Twice as tall as a man?

[Lachlan Hunt]

It said 8m long, not 8m tall.

Re:Twice as tall as a man?

[jfengel]

The height of a horse is measured to the withers, basically its shoulders. I suspect that applies to quadrupeds in general. It's because it's a fairly stable place to measure to, but it's hard to keep a horse steady.

This bird isn't a quadruped, but if it has a long and neck it's more meaningful to measure to the shoulder than the top of its head.

The 8 meters is length, rather than height: tip of its head to the top of its tail, and the height is measured foot to shoulder. (I'm inferring that the thing has a tail. I'd much rather get my science news from Science News than from the BBC.)

Re:Discredited

[mark0]

Why is the parent modded down? There is a long history of fake fossils [paleodirect.com] coming out of China. The posting is, perhaps, a bit terse, but hardly a troll.

Re:Discredited

[HeroreV]

The article says it was flightless. You know what else says it was flightless? The summary. Can't you at least read the summary?

Re:Discredited

[paleo2002]

China has been a major source of new theropod fossils over the past 15 or so years. I have friends at the AMNH who are working on dinosaur and bird fossils from the Gobi. The AMNH cosponsors digs with Chinese researchers all the time. Sometimes their government is not very enthusiastic about sharing material, but we often work something out.

Check out http://palaeoblog.blogspot.com/2007/06/gigantorapt or-erlianensis-from-china.html [blogspot.com] for more information. It turns out a Japanese film crew was there when the fossil was being uncovered. You may also want to look at the link on the same page to the original journal article for this find. Hopefully Nature can live up to the high academic standards of slashdot readers.