Thitiwoot Sethapanichsakul

Exactly.

They go through a very kind of rapid growth phase initially where they get very big, very fast.

So one of the many kind of ideas we have of why sauropods were likely evolving to be so big is because of kind of their body plan.

You're able to, one,

access resources that other dinosaurs couldn't by reaching up to the tops of trees.

As you get bigger, you get hunted less because other theropod dinosaurs can't go after you, you're too big.

And it creates this kind of feedback loop where evolution, essentially it's driving sauropods to just get bigger and bigger because they're more successful when they're bigger and taller.

But in the Cretaceous period, they truly get gigantic.

And in our study, you know, we compare other Asian sauropods and we find that when Naga Titan shows up, there's this kind of spike of sauropods that exceed 20 tons in Asia in general.

And then they kind of settle into this wide range of body masses where they can take up.

So it can be as low as like six tons all the way up to maybe 30, 50 tons.

And they

Keep going until the end of the Cretaceous period when the mass extinction occurs.

When I came up with my PhD project, it was also a passion project for myself.

I wanted to work on dinosaurs from back home.

That was always the childhood dream.

I always told my high school teachers, like, I'm going to name a dinosaur.

It's going to be from Thailand.

That's going to be my first one.

And here I am, you know.