We don’t have live dinosaurs today we could put on a bathroom scale to weigh. But how much DID they weigh? Take the spinosaurus, which had huge 5-foot spines along its back. We know these dinos were about 50 feet long and stood over 10 feet tall – that’s higher than your bedroom ceiling. Just guessing from this, the whole animal could have weighed anywhere from 8 to 23 tons. Even if you had a pet spino dino, it couldn’t fit on that scale anyway!
Wee ones: Who’s taller, you or a 5-foot-tall spine on a spinosaurus? Find out your height in feet!
Little kids: How much taller than you is that 5-foot spine — or how much taller are you? Bonus: If you have 10-foot measuring tapes, how many of those would you have to lay end to end to measure that 50-foot dino?
Big kids: A 23-ton spinosaurus would weigh almost 3 times an 8-ton one, if that turned out to be right. How much would YOU weigh if you turned out to weigh 3 times as much? Bonus: How much more does a 23-ton stegosaurus weigh than a 6-ton elephant, in pounds? (Reminder if needed: A ton has 2,000 pounds.)
The sky’s the limit: If you have 3 spinosaurus of different sizes, and the first 2 together weigh 11 tons, the 2nd and 3rd together weigh 22 tons, and the 1st and 3rd together weigh 15 tons, how much does each one weigh?
Answers:
Wee ones: Different for everyone…see if your height is more or less than 5 feet.
Little kids: Different for everyone again…subtract your height from 5, or subtract 5 from your height. Bonus: 5 tapes.
Big kids: Different again…multiply your weight by 3. You can also add it to itself, then add it on 1 more time. Bonus: 34,000 pounds, since it weighs 17 tons more.
The sky’s the limit: 2, 9 and 13 tons. If the 1st and 2nd weigh 11 and the 1st and 3rd weigh 15, then swapping out the 2nd dino for the 3rd increased the total by 4 tons. So the 3rd weighs 4 tons more than the 2nd dino. Together those 2 weigh 22 tons, so if the 3rd were as small as the 2nd, they’d weigh just 18 tons. That means the 2nd dino weighs 9 tons, and you can figure out the other 2 from there.
