1I1(1St)

THE WASIfINGTON POST WEDNESDAY, MAY ll, 1988 A3 I ,I .Baltimorean Debunks Dinosaur Finds :Specialist B Comparison of Bones Shows 'New' Species Long Known

several partial skeletons of different By Boyce Rensberger seum collections. He has also dis- Washington Po.'1l Stolff Writer covered several errors in previous sizes. reconstructions of the Brachiosau- Paul found that, while the Ultra- It is time to rewrite the record rus skeleton and corrected them in saurus bone is bigger than the com- book for dinosaurs, according to a his illustrations to reveal the ani- parable bone displayed in East Ber- leading expert on the extinct giants. mals as having a shorter trunk and lin, it is about the same size as a ' Contrary to a series of allegedly taller forelimbs, which give it a Brachiosaurus shoulder bone not on record-breaking discoveries' that more giraffe-like image than pre- display. began in 1972, the largest known vious experts have suggested. In fact, Paul concluded, the bones dinosaur really is a species known Brachiosaurus "is the only Quad- are so similar that Supersaurus and since the early 1900s, the familiar rupedal dinosaur which one would Ultrasaurus are "almost certainly" Brachiosaurus. have to reach up to slap the belly as not separate species but simply ad- The newest finding by Gregory one walked under it," Paul said. ditional examples of Brachiosaurus. S. Paul, a self-taught dinosaur spe- "Most unusual for a tetrapod [four- Paul's reconstruction of the skel- cialist from Baltimore, debunks legged animal]. much less a dino- eton also scales back estimates of "discovery" of Supersaurus in 1972, saur, it is an exceptionally elegant the beasts' weight. Ultrasaurus had the even bigger Ulirasaurus in and majestic design." been thought to weigh as much as 1979 and the ground-shaking "Seis- Supersaurus and Ultrasaurus be- 190 tons, but Paul said a more ac- mosaurus" seven years later. long to the group popularly called curate estimate of adult weight is Paul's anatomical analyses and brontosaurs or brachiosaurs. They between 45 and 50 tons at the lean- reconstructions of dinosaur skele- are four-legged plant eaters with est time of the year, with the tons in meticulously scaled draw- long tails and long necks. weight growing by perhaps one- ings are becoming the accepted Their existence was inferred third in "prime fat-bearing condi- standard in the field. from the discovery in Colorado of a tion!' "There have been a lot of big few isolated bones, chiefly shoulder Both of the challenged record- e GREGORY s.PAUL claims in recent years, but they blades, that resembled those of breakers were discovered by Jim don't hold up very well," said Mi- Brachiosaurus but appeared larger Jensen, then of Brigham Young Uni- best known member is head to tail tip. "Seismosaurus" is of dinosaurs, and mammals. Can' chael Brett-Surman, a dinosaur spe- than previously known examples. versity. Jensen, whose luck and skill Diplodocus. estimated at between 100 and 120 trary to more dated artists' irnpres- cialist at the Smithsonian Institu- They were found to be larger than at discovering fossils are legendary, Brachiosaurs and diplodocids are sions, Paul's reconstructions show tion's Museum of Natural History. the world's only fully mounted is not known within the field as a members of the sauropod family of feet in length and Brachiosaurus at 72 feet. that brachiosaur tails did not drag "Greg's reconstructions have been Brachiosaurus on display, a spec- leading authority on interpreting his dinosaurs. on the ground but stuck out behind independently verified, and just imen at the Humboldt Museum of finds. Now retired, he could not be Although "Seismosaurus" was Paul's reconstruction agrees with about everybody's using them Natural History in East Berlin. reached for comment. said to be the largest known dino- the widely shared opinion that di- as counterweights to the long now." Paul, who has examined the di- "Seismosaurus," a name that has saur when discovered in 1986, top- nosaurs were not the sluggish necks. Paul's revision of the record nosaur collection in East Berlin, not been granted formal scientific ping both of Jensen's finds, Paul's brutes suggested by their reptilian The architecture of their legs and books is based on a detailed com- traced some errors in older views of status, is not a brontosaur or analysis of the fossils suggests that ancestry but faster-moving crea- musculature suggests that they parison of the newly discovered fos- Brachiosaurus to the fact that the brachiosaur but belongs to a related it may have weighed less than Su- tures whose behavior is more like moved with "an elephant-like am- sils with comparable bones in mu- German mount is a composite of group called the diplodocids whose persaurus, although longer from that of birds, the living descendants ble," he said. .