Giraffatitan Characteristics

Giraffatitan was a huge, lightly-built, quadrupedal who measured 75 - 100 feet (23-30 metres) in length. Its weight was around 41 tons. Giraffatitan had a very long neck and a whip-like tail. It was one of the largest dinosaurs to ever walk the Earth. Giraffatitan had a giraffe-like build (hence its name) with 4 long limbs. Its skull had a tall arch anterior to the eyes, a number of openings and spoon-like teeth. The first toe on its front foot and the first 3 toes on its hind feet were clawed.

Giraffatitan had a relatively small brain, even when its massive body size is taken into account. A 2009 study calculated its brain-to-body mass ratio (a rough estimate of possible intelligence) at a low.

Giraffatitan was a herbivorous dinosaur. If Giraffatitan was endothermic (warm-blooded), it would have taken an estimated 10 years to reach full size, if it were instead poikilothermic (cold-blooded), then it would have required over 100 years to reach full size. As a warm-blooded dinosaur, the daily energy demands of Giraffatitan would have been enormous. It would probably have needed to eat more than 182 kilograms (400 pounds) of food per day. If Giraffatitan was fully cold-blooded or was a passive bulk endotherm, it would have needed far less food to meet its daily energy needs. Some scientists have proposed that large dinosaurs like Giraffatitan were gigantotherms.

Giraffatitan brancai was first named and described by German paleontologist Werner Janensch in 1914 as Brachiosaurus brancai, based on several specimens recovered from the Tendaguru formation near Lindi, in what is now Tanzania.