From Biggest to Cutest: Dinosaurs vs Dogs!

Dogs are part of everyday life for all of us. Although not as regularly on motivational posters as their arch enemies, cats, their story with humans is a long one of much greater complexity. We have invested more labour into our canine companions than in any other species. Starting at some point between 40,000 and 15,000 years ago, a group of Canis lupus, the grey wolf, became Canis lupus familiaris, the dog. This process is highly debated, ranging from human-driven direct selection to wolf-driven dependence on scavenging human waste.

Media stories about new dinosaur discoveries are commonly accompanied by body masses for the animal in question, and nothing guarantees media coverage for a new dinosaur like a body mass suggesting it was the ‘largest dinosaur ever found’. But how can the weight of an animal that has been extinct for at least 66 million years be calculated? I shall investigate different methods that are commonly used to work out the body mass of extinct organisms, demonstrating that these can produce wildly different results, and that media values should be met with a healthy level of skepticism.