Giraffatitan

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Giraffatitan
Skeleton reconstruction of Giraffatitan brancai in the Natural History Museum Berlin after the renovation in 2007: the legs are under the body, the tail is lifted from the ground. The exhibit is Fossil of the Year 2012.

Skeleton reconstruction of Giraffatitan brancai in the Natural History Museum Berlin after the renovation in 2007: the legs are under the body, the tail is lifted off the ground. The exhibit is Fossil of the Year 2012.

Temporal occurrence
Upper Jurassic (?  Callovian , Oxfordian to Tithonian )
163.5 to 145 million years
Locations
Systematics
Dinosaur (dinosauria)
Lizard dinosaur (Saurischia)
Sauropodomorpha
Sauropods (Sauropoda)
Brachiosauridae
Giraffatitan
Scientific name
Giraffatitan
Paul , 1988
Art
  • Giraffatitan brancai ( Janensch , 1914)

Giraffatitan is a genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Upper Jurassic of Africa. With a total length of up to 26 meters, this dinosaur is one of the largest land animals in the history of the earth . The first fossils come from the Tendaguru sitein the former German East Africa (now Tanzania ), where they were found by a German expedition that took place between 1909 and 1912.

With other genera, Giraffatitan forms the taxon Brachiosauridae due to common anatomical features ( synapomorphies ) such as the long forelegs and the high-lying nostrils . Giraffatitan is the sister genus of Brachiosaurus , to which it was originally placed by Werner Janensch . Janensch described two species, Brachiosaurus brancai and Brachiosaurus fraasi , but soon discovered that B. fraasi is a younger synonym of B. brancai .

Life reconstruction of Giraffatitan

In 1988 Gregory S. Paul pointed out a number of differences between the North American type of Brachiosaurus ( B. altithorax ) and the African material and placed B. brancai in its own subgenus Giraffatitan . George Olshevsky found these differences significant enough to classify Giraffatitan as a genus. A close investigation by Michael Taylor showed that this distinction is justified, since the differences between the two species are significantly greater than those between other well-known sauropod genera, such as Diplodocus and Barosaurus .

A skeleton of Giraffatitan , which was voted Fossil of the Year 2012 by the Paleontological Society, is on display in the Berlin Museum of Natural History . It consists of skeletal material from several individuals and also contains the material of the holotype (HMN SII). The accompanying certificate from Guinness World Records for the record of the world's largest dinosaur skeleton continues to designate it as Brachiosaurus brancai .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Robert Bussert, Wolf-Dieter Heinrich, Martin Aberhan: The Tendaguru Formation (Late Jurassic to Early Cretaceous, southern Tanzania): definition, palaeoenvironments, and sequence stratigraphy. In: Fossil Record. Vol. 12, No. 2, 2009, ISSN  2193-0066 , pp. 141-174, doi : 10.1002 / mmng.200900004 .
  2. ^ A b Michael P. Taylor: A Re-Evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropoda) and Its Generic Separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914). In: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Vol. 29, No. 3, 2009, ISSN  0272-4634 , pp. 787-806, doi : 10.1671 / 039.029.0309 .
  3. ↑ Werner Janensch : Overview of the vertebrate fauna of the Tendaguru layers along with a brief characterization of the newly listed species of sauropods. In: Archives for Biontology. Vol. 3, No. 1, 1914, ZDB -ID 500155-9 , pp. 81-110. Digitized version (PDF)
  4. ↑ a b Werner Janensch: Material and shape content of the sauropods in the yield of the Tendaguru expedition. In: Scientific results of the Tendaguru expedition 1909–1912. NF Series 1, Part 2, Lfg. 1 = Palaeontographica. Supplement. 7, 1, 2, 1, 1929, ISSN  0085-4611 , pp. 1-34.
  5. ↑ a b Gregory S. Paul : The brachiosaur giants of the Morrison and Tendaguru with a description of a new subgenus, Giraffatitan, and a comparison of the world's largest dinosaurs. Proceedings of the North American Paleontological Conference IV: The Golden Age of Dinosaurs - The Mid Mesozoic Terrestrial Ecosystem of North America Field Trip and Colloqium (= Hunteria. Vol. 2, No. 3, ZDB -ID 1251702-1 ). University of Colorado Museum, Boulder CO 1988, digitized version (PDF; 12.32 MB) .
  6. ↑ Donald F. Glut : Brachiosaurus. In: Donald F. Glut: Dinosaurs. The Encyclopedia. McFarland, Jefferson NC et al. 1997, ISBN 0-89950-917-7 , p. 218.
  7. ↑ Annika Butz: The largest dinosaur skeleton in the world. 2014. On: Museum für Naturkunde - Berlin-postkolonial.de

Web links

Commons : Giraffatitan  - collection of images, videos and audio files