Giraffatitan brancai
Giraffatitan brancai was one of the most spectacular plant-eaters that ever lived: a brachiosaurid whose forelimbs were longer than its hind limbs, tilting the whole body upward like a giraffe. Its neck, built from thirteen greatly elongated cervical vertebrae, reached roughly eight to nine metres, while the tail was short by sauropod standards.
Giraffatitan
Giraffatitan brancai
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Quick facts
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Weight
20000–40000 kg
Length
21–23 m
Diet
Herbivore
Period
Jurassic
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20000–40000 kg
21–23 m
Jurassic
Quadrupedal
11–13 m
15 km/h
Herbivore
42 recorded fossil finds in Tanzania. First described in 1914 by Janensch.
Sites and counts from the Paleobiology Database
The timeline shows the whole age of dinosaurs – and how much time has passed since. The glowing part is when Giraffatitan lived.
million years ago
Lived 154–145 million years ago
If the whole age of dinosaurs were a single day, Giraffatitan lived at 13:13.
Chapter • Meet the dinosaur
Giraffatitan brancai was one of the most spectacular plant-eaters that ever lived: a brachiosaurid whose forelimbs were longer than its hind limbs, tilting the whole body upward like a giraffe. Its neck, built from thirteen greatly elongated cervical vertebrae, reached roughly eight to nine metres, while the tail was short by sauropod standards. The skull was tiny compared with the body and carried a tall, arched nasal crest with the bony nostril openings placed high on the head. The jaws bore broad, chisel-shaped teeth suited to cropping twigs and conifer foliage rather than chewing it. Air-filled chambers linked to a bird-like system of air sacs hollowed out the vertebrae, making this giant far lighter than its bulk suggests. Its skin was scaly; there is no evidence of feathers in sauropods. Giraffatitan moved permanently on all fours on pillar-like limbs, with the tail carried clear of the ground. How high it held its neck is still debated: digital studies of the neutral joint positions suggest a fairly straight, forward-directed neck, whereas comparisons with living long-necked animals argue for a habitually raised posture. Either way, it could browse at heights unreachable by any other herbivore in the Tendaguru fauna. Bone histology of sauropods shows extremely fast growth over the first decades of life, with sexual maturity reached well before full adult size. The diet consisted of conifers, ginkgoes, ferns and cycads. Food was cropped and swallowed whole, then fermented for long periods in a huge gut with the help of microbes. An adult probably needed several hundred kilograms of plant matter every day, which meant feeding for most of its waking hours. All the good material comes from the Tendaguru Formation of south-eastern Tanzania, excavated during the German expeditions of 1909–1913 led by Werner Janensch and Edwin Hennig. Janensch named the species Brachiosaurus brancai in 1914. In 1988 Gregory S. Paul argued that the African material differed enough from North American Brachiosaurus altithorax to deserve its own name, and after Michael P. Taylor's detailed 2009 comparison most researchers now treat Giraffatitan as a separate genus. The composite mounted skeleton at the Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin stands about 13.27 metres tall and is recognised as the tallest mounted dinosaur skeleton in the world.
Chapter • Where it lived
Giraffatitan lived in the Late Jurassic, about 154–150 million years ago, in what is now the Lindi Region of south-eastern Tanzania. The Tendaguru Formation preserves a coastal setting of shallow lagoons, tidal flats and river floodplains with a strongly seasonal climate alternating between wet spells and long dry periods. Conifers, cycads, ginkgoes and ferns dominated the vegetation. Giraffatitan shared this landscape with the sauropods Dicraeosaurus and Tornieria, the stegosaur Kentrosaurus and predators such as Elaphrosaurus and large allosauroids.
Chapter • Family life
15–30
Chapter • Wild behavior
Cathemeral
Bones of several individuals of different sizes occur together in the Tendaguru beds, which has been read as evidence that the animals gathered at least occasionally. There are, however, no trackways or bonebeds that unambiguously demonstrate cohesive Giraffatitan herds, so group living remains a plausible but unproven inference. Juveniles had proportionally shorter necks and different body proportions from adults, which may mean they browsed at different heights and competed less with fully grown animals.
The Berlin mount stands roughly 13.27 metres tall and holds the record as the world's tallest mounted dinosaur skeleton.
The humerus of the best-known individual is over two metres long — taller than most people.
Its forelimbs were longer than its hind limbs, the opposite of most sauropods, giving it a giraffe-like slope.
The nostril openings sat high on an arched crest; the old idea that it snorkelled in deep water has long been rejected.
Hollow, air-filled neck vertebrae connected to a bird-like respiratory system saved the animal several tonnes of weight.
The species was called Brachiosaurus brancai for more than 70 years before being renamed Giraffatitan in 1988.
The German Tendaguru expeditions shipped hundreds of tonnes of fossil-bearing material back to Berlin.
Published mass estimates have ranged from about 15 tonnes to over 45 tonnes depending on the method used.
Chapter • Scientific place
fossil.fandom.com
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
VERIFY:period_end_mya: stored=150 suggested=145 confidence=medium — Sources summarising the Tendaguru dinosaur-bearing beds state that Giraffatitan "lived from 145 to 150 million years ago, during the Kimmeridgian to Tithonian ages of the Late Jurassic", so an end age of 150 Ma truncates the occurrence before the Tithonian. A younger end age of about 145 Ma is the commonly supported value.
Open sourcepteros.com
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
VERIFY:geological_stage: stored=kimmeridgian suggested=kimmeridgian-tithonian confidence=medium — The Giraffatitan-bearing horizons of the Tendaguru Formation are referred to the Kimmeridgian through Tithonian stages, not the Kimmeridgian alone; the sauropod fauna is described as coming "from the Kimmeridgian to the Tithonian Stages". Storing only the Kimmeridgian omits the younger stage that also yields the taxon.
Open sourcePaleobiology Database
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Paleobiology Database taxon record giving the accepted classification of Giraffatitan brancai within Dinosauria, Saurischia, Sauropodomorpha, Sauropoda, Neosauropoda, Macronaria, Titanosauriformes and Brachiosauridae.
Open sourceFossil Record (Bussert, Heinrich & Aberhan, 2009)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed definition of the Tendaguru Formation in the Lindi Region of south-eastern Tanzania, documenting the fossil localities and the stratigraphic range of the beds that yield Giraffatitan.
Open sourceFossil Record (Aberhan et al., 2002)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed reconstruction of the Tendaguru palaeoenvironment as alternating coastal lagoons, tidal flats and vegetated floodplains under a seasonal climate, the habitat inhabited by Giraffatitan.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London (Dino Directory)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum taxon profile documenting Giraffatitan as a high-browsing herbivorous sauropod that fed on Late Jurassic conifers and other tough plant material.
Open sourceFossil Record (Bussert, Heinrich & Aberhan, 2009)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Taylor, 2009)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed comparative osteology that separates the African species from Brachiosaurus and provides the authoritative anatomical description and diagnosis of Giraffatitan brancai.
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Taylor, 2009)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed comparative osteology that separates the African species from Brachiosaurus and provides the authoritative anatomical description and diagnosis of Giraffatitan brancai.
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Taylor, 2009)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed comparative osteology that separates the African species from Brachiosaurus and provides the authoritative anatomical description and diagnosis of Giraffatitan brancai.
Open sourceJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology (Taylor, 2009)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed comparative osteology that separates the African species from Brachiosaurus and provides the authoritative anatomical description and diagnosis of Giraffatitan brancai.
Open source