They seem to break all of the rules. There’s nothing like them around today. 

 

Containing over 72 million calories of fresh meat, you’d think Sauroposeidon would be the jackpot for a bloodthirsty carnivore. 

 

They don’t have horns. They don’t have armor. Really, the only antipredator defense they have is sheer size.

 

And size does matter. When a Goliath like this is fully grown, even the most vicious predators keep their distance, even the most ferocious raptor of the Cretaceous—Deinonychus. At 90 kilos, this raptor pales in comparison to its 50-ton prey. 

 

If we’re talking about a single adult Deinonychus and a single adult Sauroposeidon, the story would go something like this. “Hi! I’m a Deinonychus.” “I’m a Sauroposeidon.” Kuh!

 

But for a Sauroposeidon, reaching full size can take years. To make things worse, fossil evidence shows that juveniles live alone, separated from the herd until they reach at least a third of their adult weight. That means for nearly a decade, they wander the forest alone. And that forest is crawling with Deinonychus.

 

Intelligent and well-armed, they hunt on their own or sometimes in packs, they run with a top speed of 65 kilometers per hour.

 

These raptors can take on a youngster. For a young Sauroposeidon, there’s just one solution—get big quickly. And that’s gonna take a lot of…