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3000-pound triceratops skull excavated in South Dakota (2020)
- ErikVandeWater 5y agoI wonder why the editor chose 3k-pound instead of 1.5 ton, or 3,000 lb. Never seen that before. Edit: OP changed the title, though the original title was within the HN character limit.
- senthil_rajasek 5y agoMy guess is # of headline chars is a precious commodity and pounds are a more common unit if weight than tons?
- codetrotter 5y ago> pounds are a more common unit if weight than tons? Are they though?
- spfzero 5y agoThere's two thousand of them for every ton, so yes! :-)
- krick 5y agoThat's... pretty good. Cannot even object.
- senthil_rajasek 5y agoI did a quick google trends comparison and pound certainly has a lot more references than ton. Another way would be to use a text corpora...
- jordan801 5y agoPerhaps because there is a metric ton and a US ton.
- kevinmchugh 5y agoI dunno if USA today worries about that tbh
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- FridayoLeary 5y agoalthough given the context the units should be specified in stones...
- dvh 5y agoTo woo women: https://liturgicalcredo.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/robin-williams-dead-poets-society.jpg https://liturgicalcredo.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/robin-wi...
- mumblemumble 5y agoThe editor chose "3,000-pound." Whoever submitted this to HN abbreviated that to "3k-pound."
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- SquibblesRedux 5y agoOP (me) copy-pasted the title exactly from the source page. Assuming the title at time of copy-paste was "3,000", I don't know how it became 3k. Is there an automatic search replace done by the HN submission process?
- dcminter 5y agoThere is - on one occasion a submission of mine had the capitalization automatically changed (incorrectly as it happens). I don't know if this is what happened to you, but it seems likely.
- alok99 5y agoIs it that heavy because it petrified? I wonder how much it would've weighed as just bone.
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoYes, a fossilized (not petrified) object has a density similar to stone, typically around 2.7 kg/m^3. Bones, like most living tissues, have a density close to 1. So to a first approximation, this would have weighed 1,000 lbs when alive, comparable to the head of a modern elephant.
- topher515 5y agoYou’re suggesting that a cubic meter of stone weighs just 3 kg (6.6 lbs)? That doesn’t sound right.
- johnisgood 5y agoFor the interested: according to a quick search, the head of an elephant weighs 400 kg (881 lbs), and among African elephants adult males weigh between 1800 (3968 lbs) and 6300 kg (13 889 lbs). They are heavy!
- clort 5y agoI'm guessing it is 3k pounds now it has been turned into stone, rather than when the triceratops wore it on the end of its neck..
- jjjbokma 5y agoYes, see my estimate for another skull: http://johnbokma.com/blog/2016/08/20/verifying-the-weight-of-a-t-rex-skull.html http://johnbokma.com/blog/2016/08/20/verifying-the-weight-of...
- clort 5y agodo you have an estimate for the original skull weight? That link just cross references the mineral weight.. edit, wondering if dinosaur skulls had cavities like bird skulls to keep the weight down..
- krick 5y agoThat's easy to calculate. We don't know which mineral it was this time, but taking an estimate of 3.7 g/cm³ from his post, Taking an estimate of 3.7 g/cm³ (but we don't know which mineral was in this case), and assuming something like 1.5 for bone density (which is at the higher side, but I'm allowing that these protective plates may be a lot denser than the skull bones themselves, no idea if it's correct though) that would be like 1200 lbs.
- pegasus 5y agoThey did indeed. They developed the cavities to deal with the huge size they attained, but that tech came in handy millions of years later when they/some reprofiled to flight.
- diplodocusaur 5y agoI was hoping for full pics of the dino but got a picture of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II
- mring33621 5y agoYeah, I was annoyed at the same thing. 14 pictures in Ads, but only 1 crappy picture of the subject of the article. Also... No course credit? Robbery!
- switch007 5y agoThe odds of there being a photo in these kind of articles seems exactly inversely proportional to how cool the subject is.
- bosswipe 5y agoA Google Image search for "triceratops Grand River National Grassland" turned up a bunch of images.
- disgrunt 5y agoClose enough.
- davedunkin 5y agoA fossil's a fossil.
- tyingq 5y agoThe article on the college's website has a few pictures: https://news.wcmo.edu/campus-life/westminster-college-undergraduate-researchers-discover-triceratops-during-annual-dig-2/ https://news.wcmo.edu/campus-life/westminster-college-underg...
- ChuckMcM 5y agoThis is a better link. I wonder what the bones weighed prior to being fossilized. Also wondering if this is a 'typical' specimen or not. That said, the college having a program to collect fossils for undergrads to work on really rocks. (no pun intended) There really isn't anything that can replace hands on experience for these kinds of things.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 5y agopress release from dig team at Westminister, MO college https://news.wcmo.edu/campus-life/westminster-college-undergraduate-researchers-discover-triceratops-during-annual-dig-2/ https://news.wcmo.edu/campus-life/westminster-college-underg...
- dvaun 5y agoThis contains more information than the link in the OP.
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoNot only that but the one linked in the OP is 404
- ChrisArchitect 5y agoInteresting because since the time when this was actually news in late-August 2020 and USA Today linked the press release, the college has moved to a new domain and for whatever reason didn't keep the old site up or redirect. Point being, story is old.
- pattisapu 5y ago"Although the coronavirus pandemic derailed plans and typical course credit could not be offered, students signed up for the excursion anyway." Kudos to these volunteers!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]