how are paleontologists able to estimate an animals weight just by the size/mass of a bone eg. Femur, rib, tibia.

867 views

Like how?

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Not an expert but I guess they’d estimate plausible proportions for each animal based on other discoveries, real life animals they evolved into, weight of the individual bone etc, or at least in comparison to humans. EG “wow that T. rex has a huge shin bone, and we know it ate X smaller animal. It’s torso was probably X size in order to hunt effectively , therefore all limbs and components = Z weight” ?

You are viewing 1 out of 2 answers, click here to view all answers.