Giganotosaurus carolinii

[DinoFan83]

I think now would be a good time to explain why size estimates from 2 other rather popular (both old and new) Giganotosaurus reconstructions are most likely incorrect, and to reveal some more information about SpinoInWonderland's Giganotosaurus GDI, as I finally found sufficient and appropriate time to do so.

As of late, a Giganotosaurus skeletal reconstruction by Dan Folkes has become rather popular. It is the following, and the size estimate from it is 8300 kg for MUCPv-95 (2.2%), resulting in 7780 kg for MUCPv-Ch1. (Side note: since it is in the link, I don't know how to get 9700 kg for Sue without overinflating the ribcage. I would therefore advise to use my 8200 kg estimate instead as it corrects for this problem).

In all fairness, it seems to be a well done skeletal aside from the issues I will discuss from here on. Those issues are, perhaps somewhat interestingly, just the same as some of those from Hartman's skeletal: a likely too narrow ribcage, and a likely too small size difference between MUCPv-Ch1 and MUCPv-95.

First of all, the ribcage. As per post #16, it was most likely 147.3 cm wide.
However, the ribcage in Dan Folkes' Giganotosaurus is considerably narrower than that (I got 125.1 cm using the 136 cm femur as scale). Therefore, as is, the skeletal is likely to be underestimated because its ribcage is 17.7% narrower than the probable actual width.

At this point you may be wondering just how large MUCPv-Ch1 would be with a 147.3 cm wide ribcage. This is where the part about revealing more information on SpinoInWonderland's Giganotosaurus GDI comes into play. 
As per my personal communication with him, the total volume of his skeletal is 8507 liters - and even this is with a 134 cm ribcage instead of a 147.3 cm ribcage (he was not aware of the potential for the 134 cm width to be too narrow at the time he did the GDI, so he used it).

He also has told me the torso segment of that model is 5329 liters. And since we know the proportional torso mass, we can know what a Giganotosaurus with the probable 147.3 cm wide ribcage would weigh.
So: 5329x1.099=5857. 5857-5329=528, therefore we can add 528 liters to the 8507 liter estimate, which would give us 9035 liters. Multiplying this by 0.95 (as proposed for terrestrial theropods by Asier Larramendi and Greg Paul) gives us 8580 kg for SpinoInWonderland's MUCPv-Ch1 estimate adapted to fit the probable ribcage width of MUCPv-Ch1, which is somewhat larger than the narrow-bodied estimate from Dan Folkes.

This also has an implication for the size of MUCPv-95 (which from post #7, as will come in handy later, was most likely 10% larger. I consider this more likely to be correct than the 2.2% that Folkes has used because MUCPv-95 is proportionally >2.2% deeper than MUCPv-Ch1 on the whole - such as with the 10% - while being more eroded).
When accounting for both this problem and the ribcage problem, we get 11420 kg for MUCPv-95 instead of 8300 kg (8580x1.1^3=11420).

Of course, like stated before, Dan Folkes' skeletal isn't the only popular skeletal that is most likely incorrect. Franoys' is the other one, and despite its popularity it suffers from the same issue with the ribcage width outlined above.
It comes out to a volume of 7467 liters (obviously quite lower than the 9035 liters of SpinoInWonderland's skeletal) because of that. The difference in ribcage width between it and my estimate is also notable - I got 128.7 cm using (as like before) the 136 cm femur as scale, so it comes out to 14.4% narrower than 147.3 cm.
Consequently, I'd trust the estimate from SpinoInWonderland over that from Franoys.

Hopefully this is clarifying enough, but if anyone has any questions they can feel free to ask. Reply