Amphiocelias

Amphicoelias is a genus of sauropod dinosaur that may be the largest creature Earth ever seen. He is known from. He could reach 65-70 meters long an weighing more than 100 tons. This giant lived in Late Jurassic and he was found in Morrison Formation.


There were two species of this sauropod. First A.altus was 25 meters long. Scientists believe that Diplodocus and A.altus are separate genera. The second A.fragillimus is known from vertebra that is 1.5 meters tall probably could reach 70 meters long.


While A. fragillimus was relatively thin, its enormous size still made it very massive. Weight is much more difficult to determine than length in sauropods, as the more complex equations needed are prone to greater margins of error based on smaller variations in the overall proportions of the animal. Carpenter used Paul's 1994 estimate of the mass of Diplodocus carnegii(11.5 tons) to speculate that A. fragillimus could have weighed up to 122.4 metric tons. The heaviest blue whale on record weighed about 195 tons, and the heaviest dinosaur known from reasonably good remains, the Argentinosaurus, weighed 80–100 tons, although if the size estimates can be validated, it would still be lighter than Bruhathkayosaurus, which is estimated to have weighed 139 tons.The Morrison Formation environment in which Amphicoelias lived would have resembled a modern savanna, though since grass did not appear until the Late Cretaceous, ferns were probably the dominant plant and main food source for Amphicoelias. Though Engelmann et al. (2004) dismissed ferns as a sauropod food source due to their relatively low caloric content, Carpenter argued that the sauropod digestive system, well adapted to handle low-quality food, allows for the consumption of ferns as a large part of the sauropod diet. Carpenter also noted that the occasional presence of large petrified logs indicate the presence of 20–30 m (65–100 ft) tall trees, which would seem to conflict with the savanna comparison. However, the trees are rare, and since tall trees require more water than the savanna environment could generally provide, they probably existed in narrow tracts or 'gallery forests' along rivers and gulleys where water could accumulate. Carpenter speculated that giant herbivores like Amphicoelias may have used the shade of the gallery forests to stay cool during the day, and done most of their feeding on the open savanna at night.