The body mass-maximum speed relationship and the athletic capability of giant proboscideans and sauropods
Javier Ruiz, Anthony Romilio, Juha Saarinen, Angélica Torices, Juan Manuel Jiménez-Arenas · 2025
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Description
Javier Ruiz and co-authors estimate how fast the largest land animals of all time could run, in this 2025 study. Their subjects are giant fossil elephants and sauropod dinosaurs. Big bodies grant long strides, yet mass strains bones, joints, and muscles, so the largest animals are rarely the fastest. A known curve linking body mass to top speed in mammals offers a way to set upper bounds for the extinct giants.
First the team checked how well two versions of that curve fit living mammals. Then they applied the curve to fossil masses and compared the results with living elephants, whose speeds are known. The estimates cap how athletic these giants could have been. Such caps feed debates about how sauropods moved, fed, and escaped danger.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Javier Ruiz, Anthony Romilio, Juha Saarinen, Angélica Torices, Juan Manuel Jiménez-Arenas |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2025 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 32 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |