Thursday Already

The material of Tarchia is terribly incomplete to the point that size estimates of the animal are based on completely different animals, have been estimated from the smallest known remains at times, and have been independently made but not verified across a number of sources. This has made the dinosaur difficult to model in a popular context without arbitrarily picking one or another size estimate as the size of the model that will be illustrated, animated, or sculpted. It is partially this reason that there was no animated Tarchia until Dinosaurs Alive! was produced and other ankylosaurs of Mongolia were used in previous videos and films depicting that area of the world and its dinosaurs. Looking at these various estimates of size, however, Tarchia may appear to either have been the longest of Mongolian ankylosaurs with an estimated length of 8m (26ft) or a modest 4.5m (14.8ft). The upper estimate of 8m places Tarchia in the same size category as Ankylosaurus whereas the 4.5m estimate is within the range of Nodosaurus sized ankylosaurs. Basically this means that Tarchia was either a typically sized, though longer than any other Mongolian, ankylosaur or it was a smaller member of the ankylosaur family. This is important to our discussions on popular culture because the Tarchia model used in Dinosaurs Alive! appears to be of a similar size to the Tarbosaurus it is shown fighting. Tarbosaurus measures in with a range from 10m to 12m (33ft to 39ft) and even at its largest estimates this would be oversized for Tarchia.

Larger Size Estimate

Smaller Size Estimate (image by Conty)