Futalognkosaurus dukei Mk. IX

Yes, I can't believe I'm doing this either.

I said MK-VIII paleo-king.deviantart.com/art/… would be the last Futa revision before a full Forgotten Giant treatment with live side-view. Well, I lied.
In fact, it may be a while before there are more live side-views, because editing them every time we learn something new about titanosaur proportions is a pain in the @$$. It's easier to do a few more skeletals, build a general composite template for each family to fill in the gaps, and THEN do Forgotten Giants format.

Editing a skeletal is much faster.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of new data in here that wasn't in the last one. This time it was feasible to make a much higher-resolution image that uses the same large scale bar and figure as my Giraffatitan, Brachiosaurus, and most of the other newer skeletals. The lower limbs now incorporate a lot more data from Dreadnoughtus and Notocolossus in all views, rather than using Mendozasaurus so heavily. The tail is also restored based on them, especially the dorsal view. Good news is, it turns out there are a lot more tail vertebrae in the holotype Futa specimen than were originally published, and I have tracked down photos documenting this. The problem is, they are all taken from bad angles, and so it's good to have Dreadnoughtus and Notocolossus caudals to use as reference for the lateral and dorsal views. Dr. Lacovara's 3D model of the Dreadnoughtus skeleton should be industry standard for sauropod papers. Interactive, 360 degree scans, you know exactly what's crushed and from which angles, and no more dodgy measurements. That's how you do it right. No more having to rely on Trigonosaurus to model that top view of the tail, which is just as well since Trigonosaurus is part of Saltasauroidea, not Lognkosauria. The tail was edited for a more lifelike posture based on the articulations of all the good titanosaur tails I could find data for. The neck is also totally overhauled based on better photos, and a bit more Malawisaurus thrown into the speculative head, just a tiny bit. Based on jaw fragments, Notocolossus and Ruyangosaurus (or some other lognkosaur that lived alongside it in the same formation) appear to have retained more of the Malawisaurus jaw curve than I had guessed.

Also notable (along with many other remains that were never published) are some large eggs found at the Lago Barreales site, which may also be from this species. thelamashow.wordpress.com/2010…   inspiringtravellers.com/wp-con… - which also makes this the first egg-inclusive sauropod skeletal in history

As usual with Futalognkosaurus, the cross-scaling was a mess. But overall I'm confident this is as close to the actual proportions that we'll get without a much better-illustrated paper from Jorge Calvo.
At 27m it's not the mega-titan that Calvo, et. al., boasted about a decade ago... but it's still got some of the biggest hips anywhere on the planet - at least ones that are near-complete. This one could dance.

Futalognkosaurus dukei (Calvo, et. al. 2007)

Taxonomy: Saurischia; Sauropodomorpha; Sauropoda; Macronaria; Titanosauria; Lognkosauria
Meaning of name: "Great Chief Lizard of Duke Energy Company"
Time: Late Cretaceous (Turonian-Coniacian epochs, ~ 90-87 million years ago)
Length: ~27.3m (90ft), perhaps more depending on maturity
Probable Mass: ~ 60 tons, perhaps more depending on maturity (yes, the holotype animal was smaller and lighter than we once thought... sorry but it's TRUE).

Hailing from Late Cretaceous Argentina, Futalognkosaurus dukei was one of the most unusual giant dinosaurs ever known, with the deepest neck on record and a colossal pelvis exceeding 2m at its widest point. It's also the most complete giant titanosaur known. My skeletal reconstruction is done based on extensive cross-scaling of the best unpublished photos and the most reliable published measurements. Three specimens of Futalognkosaurus were found at the site, which is on the edge of Barreales Lake. Aside from the "adult" holotype, the other two individuals are juveniles. They include arm and leg material which still has yet to be published, including at least one complete humerus: dinoweb.narod.ru/futalongosaur… . As one might expect, most photos of these are small and from awful angles which made measuring and scaling them a nightmare. The femur of one of the referred juveniles (visible in the background of one photo) lewisthelion.com/wp-content/up… shows a close resemblance to Traukutitan: lewisthelion.com/wp-content/up…

This multi-view skeletal (in its earlier incarnations) has already inspired several other restorations, including this superb one by Vladimir Nikolov: t-pekc.deviantart.com/art/Futa… . Earlier versions were the basis for the Royal Ontario Museum's exhibit torontoist.com/2012/02/the-gre… of Futalognkosaurus - though their final mount ended up being a needless frankenstein job that is more Alamosaurus than Futalognkosaurus.