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>The blue whale is the largest known animal to have ever inhabited the earth. Arguably the heaviest, most likely not the largest.

• veidr 13y ago
  > most likely not the largest What is/was, then?
  • osxrand 13y ago
    Possibly the Bruhathkayosaurus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruhathkayosaurus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruhathkayosaurus
    • dfc 13y ago
      First sentence of article: Bruhathkayosaurus (/bruːˌhæθkeɪ.ɵˈsɔrəs/; meaning "huge bodied lizard") might have been the largest dinosaur that ever lived. The accuracy of this claim, however, has been mired in controversy and debate. All the estimates are based on Yadagiri and Ayyasami's 1989 paper, which announced the find.[1]
      • osxrand 13y ago
        Yup, that's why I used the word possibly. Part of the problem is the vagueness of the term largest. Heaviest? Longest? Most mass?
        • dfc 13y ago
          I think the important distinction is not the size term but the "confidence of existence" term: "Largest/heaviest/etc known animal..."
• antimagic 13y ago
  Which is the largest then? Honest question, everything I've ever read says that it's the blue whale, and a quick check on Wikipedia still confirms this. There are some fossil fragments that suggest that some sauropods got bigger than this, but no complete fossils have been found that beat the biggest blue whales.