Giraffatitan brancai hi-fi skeletal

Giraffatitan brancai

Family: Brachiosauridae (intermediate position)
Time: Late Jurassic, Kimmeridgian-Tithonian epochs, ~150 mya
Location: Tendaguru Formation, Tanzania

*Now COMPLETELY REVISED and updated with fully restored original measurements and oft-overlooked rare specimens!*

Nearly ever part of Giraffatitan's skeleton was published from multiple specimens by Janensch in 1922, 1935-36, and 1950. Yet older skeletal restorations fabricated certain elements, omitted bones, invented wrong bones, misinterpreted Janensch’s words on the fossil material, and made some parts oversized and distorted while concealing the true meaning of the fossil record for other parts of the animal. If you have seen one of these older restorations of Giraffatitan, then you have not seen the real Giraffatitan which is found only in this new Paleo King reconstruction.

Here is a basic documentation of the first step of the restoration process back to the actual specimens Janensch found: paleoking.blogspot.com/2014/03…   The rest follows on my blog in installments.

Notably this updated version restores the entire known cervical series of HMN SII; the long-ignored original skull of the same individual, HMN S116 (which was not reconstructed for the 2007 remount in Berlin) rather than merely a scaled-up clone of the juvenile skull HMN t1; the axis scaled up from the juvenile Giraffatitan specimen HMN Be 1, whose cervicals are near-identical in proportions to the large SII, rather than the morphologically unique and separate partial neck SI (which needs demotion from lectotype to 'Brachiosauridae i.s.' with the far more complete paralectotype SII/S116 designated as the definitive holotype given its far better morphological overlap with all other referred Giraffatitan specimens [of various ages] used to construct the composite skeleton). In addition the long-neglected 12th dorsal (never before used in a skeletal!) is added, scaled down from the even larger HMN Fund no 8, moving the fused rear dorsals usually designated D12 and D11, up to positions D11 and D10, necessitating one less speculative gap-filling sculpted dorsal in the mid-torso. The unusual D9 is also restored to its original bizarre proportions with only the verified crushing removed, revealing the odd kink in the spine's articulation which may have helped strengthen the back when rearing, given its gracile proportions by brachiosaur standards. Other newly discovered details are to be revealed in the Uncensored Edition: paleo-king.deviantart.com/art/…

World-famous as the tallest animal ever mounted in a museum, the east African Giraffatitan brancai was for many years considered a species of Brachiosaurus fav.me/d4slf2d , not least by the German paleontologists who discovered and prepared it. However since Greg Paul's 1988 paper, doubts lingered as to whether two animals separated by scores of skeletal differences and hundreds of miles of land and water even in Jurassic times, could really be from the same genus. Dr. Michael P. Taylor set the record straight in 2009, separating the African animal from Brachiosaurus, and reaffirming the tentative separation proposed by Paul two decades earlier. Giraffatitan was not only different from true Brachiosaurus, it was also equally different from all other known brachiosaurs.

That said, the family resemblance is still strong. Yet Giraffatitan is a more extreme animal, with a shorter torso, longer neck, and even longer arms than the long-armed Brachiosaurus itself. It was also probably a bit lighter. The mounted skeleton in Berlin is primarily based on HMN SII, a teenage specimen around 75 ft. long and 33 tons as opposed to the 37 ton B. altithorax type specimen (which coincidentally was also a teenager). Both animals likely grew 15% bigger as adults, as evidenced by a large Giraffatitan fibula, HMN XV2.

The Humboldt Museum in Berlin houses all of the known Giraffatitan material, which comprises multiple individuals of many growth stages, including skull material from three specimens. Though none of the Giraffatitan specimens is complete, this taxon is far better represented in the fossil record than Brachiosaurus, and the many overlapping remains allow for a very accurate skeletal rendition. This reconstruction was done using the nearly complete neck of the paralectotype HMN SII, without including any of the proportionally shorter HMN SI material which is typically frankensteined onto it by Greg Paul and others. The end result is a naturally longer neck than has often been depicted. Cross-scaling the ilium, sacrum and pubes of HMN SII with the ilium, ischium and pubes of the younger HMN J, also reveals that the hips of Giraffatitan were considerably more bottom-heavy than resored by either Paul (1988) or Taylor (2009). The tail that goes with the sacrum, both in HMN Aa (probably the same individual as SII) also turned out to be smaller than commonly depicted, being around 13% smaller than the robust tail HMN Fund no. used in the Berlin mount. This larger tail probably belongs with the giant tibia HMN XV2, which may or may not be an "adult" specimen. Giraffatitan had a really small tail for a sauropod of its size.

Giraffatitan shared the tropical coastal conifer forests of Tendaguru with other endemic plant-eaters like the stegosaur Kentrosaurus, the small diplodocoid Dicraeosaurus, the bipedal Dryosaurus, the barosaurine Tornieria, the diplodocid Australodocus, the putative camarasaur Tendaguria, fellow brachiosaur "The Archbishop" (which had an even longer neck!) and the mysterious "first titanosaur", Janenschia. Predators in the area included large allosaurs and ceratosaurs, and the odd small theropod Elaphrosaurus.

*Note: No GSP! Everything in this restoration was based directly on as much original data from Werner Janensch's description papers as possible, without using Greg Paul's skeletals. Indeed, with the shoulders drawn and scaled correctly, the incline of the backbone turned out considerably steeper than Paul ever envisioned it, making a vertical neck posture far less of a stretch than previously thought, pardon the pun . Many Thanks to Mike Taylor of SV-POW for posting photos of the bones and scans of Janensch's original engravings online, and including them in his 2009 paper.

References:

Janensch, W. (1914). "Übersicht über der Wirbeltierfauna der Tendaguru-Schichten nebst einer kurzen Charakterisierung der neu aufgeführten Arten von Sauropoden." Archiv für Biontologie, 3 (1): 81–110.

Janensch, W. (1922). "Das Handskelett von Gigantosaurus robustus und Brachiosaurus brancai aus den Tendaguru-Schichten Deutsch-Ostafrikas". Centralblatt für Mineralogie, Geologie und Paläontologie 1922(15):464-480.

Janensch, W. 1935-36. Die Schädel der Sauropoden Brachiosaurus, Barosaurus und Dicraeosaurus aus den Tendaguru-Schichten Deutsch-Ostafrikas. Palaeontographica, Supplement 7 1(2):147-298.

Janensch, W. (1950a). "Die Skelettrekonstruktion von Brachiosaurus brancai". Palaeontographica, Supplement 7 (I, 3):97-103.

Janensch, W. (1950c). "Die Wirbelsäule von Brachiosaurus brancai". Palaeontolographica, Supplement, 7:27-93.

Paul, G.S. (1988). "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". Hunteria, 2(3): 1–14. (Yes I have read the paper, and no, I did not copy Paul's skeletal - which is anatomically flawed in several ways.)

Taylor, M.P. (2009). "A Re-evaluation of Brachiosaurus altithorax Riggs 1903 (Dinosauria, Sauropod) and its generic separation from Giraffatitan brancai (Janensch 1914)." Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 29(3): 787-806. www.miketaylor.org.uk/dino/pub…