DinoBlag: Giraffatitan

Two DinoBlags in a day? Blasphemy! However, I felt that I should make at least one other update before I logged off. So to that effect, this is the DinoBlag for the huge Giraffatitan brancai. Giraffatitan is known from several specimens which were found in the early 20th Century in Tanzania. It was named Brachiosaurus brancai by Janensch in 1914, but was set apart as a distinct genus by Gregory S. Paul in 1988.

It was somewhat more gracile than the American Brachiosaurus, but still measured at a whopping 82 feet (25 meters) long, 43 feet (13 meters) tall, and weighed around 25 tons (23 tonnes). It lived during the Upper Jurassic, about 145 million years ago, and was an herbivore, grazing from the tallest trees. Though its reclassification has been disputed, a recent study by Michael Taylor showed that almost every bone that was compared was different in some way or another from Brachiosaurus'.

Interestingly enough, most reconstructions of Brachiosaurus are based off of Giraffatitan skull material, giving us the classic high-crested look we're all used to. However, a skull found in the US in 1998 has been shown to belong to a North American Brachiosaurus, and is much more similar to that of the Camarasaurus than of Giraffatitan.