Size comparisons

[GuateGojira]

(04-16-2022, 04:41 AM)Mwarcaar Wrote: "You have a confusion here. The estimation of shoulder height for the specimen of Uruguay (392 mm) is 130 cm, the estimation of 120 cm came from OTHER specimens, which we can corroborate easely as this shoulder height was already in litterature before the skull from Uruguay was found, so there is no dissagreement at all."

Can you show a link for tha that other 120 cm spécimen

"Of course that is possible to know the size of an animal based on the skull, you can ask @tigerluver which is an expert on this and he can explain to you. Animals are simetric and that is a fact that we can easily corroborate with modern cats and there is no reason to believe that Smilodon was different. That is something that any Biologist and Paleontologist can do with a collection of measurements, is just a simple escalation." 

I'm sorry to contradict you but no it's impossible to know the size of an animal based only on the size of its skull, as I said in my previous post the high and low estimates are there for a good reason.
I had two male cats that were the same size and yet one had a bigger skull than the other. if we had estimated the size of the cat with a larger skull based on the skeleton of the one with a smaller skull, we would have had an overestimated size.

These are the two sources for the shoulder height, both of them before the Urugay specimen was even discovered:

* Turner & Anton, 1997:

*This image is copyright of its original author

* Anton, 2013:

*This image is copyright of its original author

Christiansen & Harris (2005) estimated a body mass between 220-360 kg, with the biggest specimen been an humerus labeled as MLP10-13 with a total length of 387.5 mm and a calculated weight of 358.4 kg. Incredible all the specimens used by them are smaller than the specimen "Smilodon bonaerensis 46" described by Mendez (1933) which suggest than that the specimen even been "average" (using the skull as a surrogated( could be no less than 360 kg and the bigger specimens like the ones from Uruguay or Paris were not just bigger but certainly heavier.

Your example of the domestic cats is not accurate, you are using on ly two cats and maybe they are not of the same race (I guess). When scientists calculate the estimations of size normally use bigger samples or better methods than just two cats. Again, animals are normally simetric and we can reconstruct with a certain degree of reliability the size of many animals. I also noted that you completelly ignored my examples of famous animals, so I need to remind you that 90% of the prehistoric animals and its sizes in litterature are estimated in this form.

I see your point, you say that unless that we have a complete skeleton we can't know the real size of an animal, but that is incorrect. Many, many prehistoric animals are known from fragmentary elements so the sizes that you see in litterature are estimations. Saying that any estimation of size is "false" is ridiculous, no scientist is going to say that, in fact, the only thing is that with better methods we can make betters calculations, but this is normally with weights, as with body size the escalation is easier as long as we have a good comparative base. Reply