If you, like me, are something of a paleo-romantic,
Swooning over dinosaurs both fearsome and gigantic,
Come feast your eyes on new reports the bone-hunters have brought us:
“Fearing nothing” means its name – the mighty beast Dreadnoughtus!
Seven times as heavy as Tyrannosaurus rex,
This gentle vegan creature boasted tons of muscle flex.
Patagonian earth under its massive feet would quake,
What a silhouette at dawn a family would make!
Even ‘mongst Titanosaurids, this one breaks the ceiling,
A shoulder blade as tall as I am – God, it sets me reeling.
On top of that, when this one died, it wasn’t yet mature …
How much more would it have grown? We can not be quite sure.
3D-scanning, high-tech models try to help us see one,
But why were creatures bigger then? What was it like to be one?
Children are the best at this, working on all fours,
Today, I think I’ll try it too: fear nothing, shake the floors!
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Further reading:
Giant dinosaur unearthed in Argentina, Science SHOT
New “Dreadnought” Dinosaur Most Complete Specimen of a Giant, Scientific American
This is one in a series of poems written by Katherine Allen, a researcher in geochemistry and paleoclimate at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University.
