Ever since fossils of the behemoth, long-necked dinosaurs known as sauropods surfaced in England nearly 170 years ago, they have awed and confused scientists. Even when the great English anatomist Sir Richard Owen recognized in 1842 that dinosaurs constituted a group of their own, apart from reptiles, he excluded the gigantic bones later classified as sauropods. Instead he interpreted them as belonging to a type of aquatic crocodile, which he had named Cetiosaurus, or “whale lizard,” for the enormous size of its bones. Nearly 30 years later, in 1871, University of Oxford geologist John Phillips would report the discovery of a Cetiosaurus skeleton sufficiently complete to reveal that, far from being an aquatic crocodile, the animal spent at least some of its time on land.

Phillips’s assessment caused considerable consternation among paleontologists for decades—they just could not conceive how such a massive animal could support its weight on land. Because sauropods were perceived as animals without a place, unsuited for land or sea, they came to be seen as unwieldy, overgrown, archaic herbivores fated for rapid extinction or, at least, marginalization by more “advanced” dinosaurs. As recently as 1991, scientists argued that sauropods were far from the apex of dinosaur success and only flourished in the absence of more specialized plant-eating dinosaurs. In this view, these giants of the Jurassic period, between about 200 million and 145 million years ago, gave way to bigger-brained, better-adapted herbivores in the Cretaceous, between some 145 million and 65.5 million years ago, such as the duckbilled hadrosaurs and horned ceratopsians, which outcompeted the sauropods and pushed them to the fringe.

This article was originally published with the title Triumph of the Titans.

5 Comments

1. 1. jtdwyer 02:26 AM 5/1/12

   As I recall, experiments testing the effects of high co2 levels on plant growth indicate that it can produce large volumes of low nutrition plants. In a high co2 environment (the Jurassic is thought to have atmospheric co2 levels >5x today's levels), there might have been vast amounts of nutrients available for animals that could process high volumes of rough vegetation. Those conditions would seem to favor very large animals with enormous, specialized digestive tracts...

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2. 2. JacobSilver 10:54 AM 5/1/12

   Large land masses, such Pangaea, would allow for the expansion in size of herbivores, which would cause the expansion in size of the carnivores. Small islands shrink species; larger land masses expand such species, and very large land masses produce giants.

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3. 3. savvov 01:09 PM 5/1/12

   “ they just could not conceive how such a massive animal could support its weight on land. ” the Dynamic model of the globe - has solved this problem almost 10 years ago. About 800 thousand years ago Earth casually appeared in the Solar system, naturally new conditions of dwelling - appeared fatal to inhabitants mega faunae and mega florae. Many millions years when the Earth was in System of planets of other Galaxy - conditions of dwelling on this planet very much and very much differed, this fact and cannot understand or do not wish scientists which unreal hypotheses about the past of a planet compose
   

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4. 4. ConinCalgary in reply to savvov 08:35 AM 5/2/12

   Good drugs, eh man

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5. 5. savvov 06:15 PM 5/3/12

   * to Conin Calgary “ Good drugs, eh man ” is an abstraction. There are two models of the globe Static and Dynamic (ww.mammoths.narod.ru), accordingly and new chronology of events on this planet. What variant of events of the past you can interestingly offer personally?
   

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