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Comment by Crito | Hacker News Reader

They also mention that it would have had to spend almost the entirety of it's life eating, rarely even sleeping, and that simply falling over could have greatly harmed it.

Maybe this was some other sort of generally less unwieldy dinosaur, except this particular specimen had some sort of gigantism disorder. Might explain why it appears the bones were continuing to grow even at that massive size, and why it became stuck.

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Sounds a little like the modern day hummingbird, which is continuously hours away from starvation.

Maybe this species continuously grows, and that conditions were just right for this one specimen to keep going past the mean age.

> Maybe this species continuously grows

Sounds a little like Bean, from the Ender's Shadow series. A mutation caused him to grow indefinitely. The researchers may have missed a nominative opportunity here.

That's not an uncommon condition. It's happened in humans before, for example.

I don't think this is actually true, as they can fly across the gulf of Mexico (500 miles) non stop.

In the migratory case they double their weight in body fat before embarking.

I wondered the same thing as soon as I saw the headline. Endless growth doesn't seem like a sustainable strategy for a land animal. How was it supposed to reproduce? If it needed to eat so much then two of them in the same area would seem like a starvation risk, to say nothing of of the risks of injury or death during mating.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Could the rest of its species be slightly more reasonable sized, while this particular specimen had some kind of growth disorder? But I suspect any large sauropod would need too much specialized adaptation to survive at a larger than usual size.

"They also mention that it would have had to spend almost the entirety of it's life eating, rarely even sleeping, and that simply falling over could have greatly harmed it."

I know that feeling.

I thought it wasn't uncommon for some reptiles to continue growing for their entire lives? Don't fish do it too?

Edit: it also says on wikipedia that they slow down in adulthood, so maybe it is somewhat different http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminate_growth

I know you didn't say this, but it's important to remember that dinosaurs aren't reptiles. They're dinosaurs.

EDIT: Well blow me over. They most certainly were. My five year old self is hanging his head in shame.

interesting. i wonder if they had to mate at an early age or never, and if after they got to a certain size that they barely moved at all, just stood there and used their necks to reach new food

Maybe the females just stored a bunch of sperm, or the males were tiny.

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