Newborn Dinosaurs

The world’s largest dinosaurs were born with adult-like proportions, possibly allowing them independence at a younger age, scientists show.

Written byCatherine Offord

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Babies of the largest dinosaur species ever to have walked the Earth, a Cretaceous sauropod called Rapetosaurus krausei, were born with adult-like limb proportions, according to a study published today (April 22) in Science. The findings suggest that these precocious dinosaurs were independent from their parents at a younger age than their late-blooming relatives.

“We took a series of detailed measurements of the baby and compared the proportions of things like mid-shaft circumference and bone length to a number of other, older Rapetosaurus skeletons in our collection,” study coauthor Kristina Curry Rogers of Macalester College, Minnesota, told ABC. “Despite massive changes in body size, the proportions stayed the same.”

The researchers analyzed a newly discovered fossil of an infant R. krausei that likely died of ...

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Meet the Author

Catherine Offord
After undergraduate research with spiders at the University of Oxford and graduate research with ants at Princeton University, Catherine left arthropods and academia to become a science journalist. She has worked in various guises at The Scientist since 2016. As Senior Editor, she wrote articles for the online and print publications, and edited the magazine’s Notebook, Careers, and Bio Business sections. She reports on subjects ranging from cellular and molecular biology to research misconduct and science policy. Find more of her work at her website.
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