Giganotosaurus and Quetzalcoatlus in Guinness Book of Records 2013

The new edition of the Guinness Book of Records has just been published.  This compendium of unusual facts and statistics comes out at this time of year and updates readers on record breaking feats and achievements.  It is a book that is targeted very much at the Christmas market and many people purchase this item each year so they can keep abreast of all the changing world records.  If there is an area of human endeavour, an aspect of the natural world – animal, vegetable or mineral it seems that somebody, somewhere, holds a record and the Guinness team have set about compiling a immense volume cataloguing it all.

Schleich Dinosaur Models

Once again dinosaurs get a mention.  In the section detailing record breakers in the natural world, the size of some dinosaurs and how big they were in comparison to living animals today is provided.  There are so many types of record but the Dinosauria do get some space allocated to them every year.  However, this year, in a change from previous years, the majority of the animals, living or extinct in the section on animal records are represented by their Schleich model equivalents.  Two prehistoric animals, models from the Schleich Saurus series can be seen in the Guinness Book of Records book, the Quetzalcoatlus and the Saurus Giganotosaurus.

Featured in the Guinness Book of Records 2013

Prehistoric Animal Record Breakers.

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

Both these prehistoric animals can be regarded as record breakers in their own way.  Giganotosaurus (G. carolini) is widely regarded as the largest meat-eating, terrestrial animal known to science (not including the Spinosaurus genus, although there are several other contenders*).  The pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus (Q. northropi) is thought of as one of the largest flying animals of all time.  Palaeontologists estimate that some individual specimens may have had a wingspan in excess of eleven metres and, although it is difficult to estimate the weight of pterosaurs a body weight of around 100 kilogrammes has been proposed.

Other theropod contenders for the largest meat-eating, terrestrial animal:

  • Mapusaurus,
  • Carcharodontosaurus
  • Saurophaganax
  • Acrocanthosaurus
  • Tyrannosaurus rex

To name a few…

To view the extensive range of dinosaur and prehistoric animal models available from Everything Dinosaur: Dinosaur and Prehistoric Animal Models and Figures.