Giraffatitan

Giraffatitan ("giraffe titan") is a genus of sauropod dinosaurs. It lived during the Upper Jurassic, about 140 million years ago. It was related to Brachiosaurus, and was one of the largest animals known to have walked the Earth.

Giraffatitans were about  long and weighed about . They had very long necks. They were obviously adapted for feeding on tall conifers. These were the main trees in the Jurassic forests. They lived in what is now Tanzania.

The specimen was first named as an African species of Brachiosaurus (B. brancai) in 1914.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. In 1991, George Olshevsky said there were enough differences to make its own genus, creating Giraffatitan.

 Size 
Several giant titanosaurians appear to surpass Giraffatitan in sheer mass. However, Giraffatitan and Brachiosaurus are still the largest brachiosaurid sauropods known from relatively complete material.

All size estimates for Giraffatitan are based on the skeleton mounted in Berlin, which is partly constructed from authentic bones. These were largely taken from specimen HMN SII, a subadult individual between  in length and about twelve meters (forty feet) tall.

 References 

category:Brachiosaurs
category:Jurassic dinosaurs
category:Dinosaurs of Africa