Giganotosaurus: a giant found by a man in a dune buggy

A tibia in the Patagonian badlands

The Giganotosaurus was found by an amateur, not a professor. In 1993 an amateur fossil hunter, Rubén Darío Carolini, was driving a dune buggy near Villa El Chocón in Neuquén Province, Argentina, when he spotted a large theropod shinbone in the rock. The paleontologists Rodolfo Coria and Leonardo Salgado announced the find at a Society of Vertebrate Paleontology meeting in 1994, with the excavation funded by the science writer Don Lessem.

In 1995 they named the animal in the journal Nature as Giganotosaurus carolinii. The name is Greek for “giant southern lizard” (gigas, giant; notos, southern; sauros, lizard), and the species name honours the man in the dune buggy. The type skeleton, catalogued as MUCPv-Ch1, is about 70 percent complete and is held at the Ernesto Bachmann Paleontological Museum in Villa El Chocón. A partial lower jaw assigned to the genus in 1998 (MUCPv-95) is about 8 percent bigger than the one in the type skeleton, a hint that some individuals grew larger still.

How big was it?

The original description made headlines because the bones rivalled those of Tyrannosaurus. Coria and Salgado reported a thigh bone about 5 centimetres longer than the one in the famous T. rex “Sue”, and a body about 12.5 metres long. Estimates have been revised repeatedly since, and they do not agree:

A spread from 4.2 to 13.8 tonnes is not a rounding error: the studies used different methods on an incomplete skeleton. Against Tyrannosaurus the picture is mixed. A 2012 study found that the skulls of Giganotosaurus and its relative Carcharodontosaurus were about the same size as a T. rex skull, and a 2013 estimate put T. rex at 8.4 tonnes and judged it the larger animal overall. The old “bigger than T. rex” headline has not survived, but the animal remains one of the largest meat-eating dinosaurs known. The Spinosaurus, which is longer on most estimates, has its own argument in our Spinosaurus article.

A family of giants

Giganotosaurus belongs to the Carcharodontosauridae, a family of giant meat-eaters named after Carcharodontosaurus. A 1996 analysis grouped it with Carcharodontosaurus and Acrocanthosaurus in that family. Within it, a 2008 analysis placed Giganotosaurus with two other southern giants, Mapusaurus and Tyrannotitan, in a tribe called Giganotosaurini. Tyrannotitan was described in 2005 by Fernando Novas and colleagues. The close relationship with Mapusaurus had been argued by Coria and Currie in 2006.

The family tie shows up in ARK too. Studio Wildcard’s Community Crunch 522 sets the two side by side: “Anything short of a Giga or Carcha is going to have a tough time fighting Cerberax.” For the other relative, see our Carcharodontosaurus and Ice Titan article. In ARK, as we will see, the Carcha is the one that took the Giga’s spotlight.

A pack, or a coincidence?

The evidence for group hunting comes from the Giganotosaurus’s close relative. At Cañadón del Gato in Neuquén, excavations that began in 1997 recovered hundreds of Mapusaurus bones from at least nine individuals, of different sizes and growth stages, mixed together in one bonebed. Conference abstracts around 2000 floated the idea that this might be a pack.

The authors who described the genus in 2006 were more careful. They wrote that the bonebed might instead be a long-term, possibly coincidental accumulation of carcasses. Coria himself later told a press conference, in 2016, that the animals may have hunted together, though that was not what his published paper concluded. Whether theropods this large hunted in organised packs or merely crowded around the same kill remains unknown, and the evidence for Giganotosaurus itself is weaker, because no comparable bonebed has been described for it. Large plant-eaters shared its environment in the Candeleros Formation, including the titanosaur Andesaurus and the rebbachisaurid Limaysaurus, and juvenile sauropods are considered its likeliest prey.

Brain, growth and time

A latex cast of the Giganotosaurus braincase gave a brain volume of about 275 millilitres. Coria and Currie calculated an encephalization quotient of 1.9, a measure of brain size against body size, and the cast resembled that of Carcharodontosaurus. Isotope work by Barrick and Showers suggested a metabolism between that of reptiles and mammals, which would be consistent with fast growth. The type specimen’s fused braincase sutures indicate it was a mature individual.

Not all the evidence is bone from the type skeleton. A 1999 study by Calvo assigned an incomplete tooth (MUCPv-52) to the genus, which makes a tooth the first known fossil of Giganotosaurus, and assigned large three-toed tracks to it as well, the biggest 50 centimetres long. Tracks cannot be tied to a species with certainty, so they are a hint about size and stride, not a measurement.

The rocks have a story too. Giganotosaurus comes from the Candeleros Formation, which was long assigned to the early Late Cretaceous. A 2026 study, as summarised by Wikipedia, re-dated the formation to the early Albian, roughly 111 to 106 million years ago, making it older than the Cenomanian age first suggested. We have not read the primary paper, so treat that figure as provisional.

How ARK built its Giga

The Giganotosaurus arrived in ARK: Survival Evolved on 5 November 2015, and the in-game dossier gives it the species name Giganotosaurus furiosa: the real genus with an invented species name that means “furious”. The wiki records its ASE temperament as “Angry” and the ASA dossier as “Wrathful”. That choice shaped the creature’s identity. In Evolved it had a Rage passive that doubled melee damage and made it attack everything nearby, including its own tribe.

Studio Wildcard’s Community Crunch 518 describes how that identity eroded: the Giga was once “the undisputed king of the ARKs”, and as new apex predators arrived, it “gradually found itself sharing the spotlight”. The wiki adds a fan note that its general usefulness fell after the Carcharodontosaurus was introduced. The overhaul is meant to reverse that.

The ASA wiki page lists a Wounded Fury passive that raises damage by up to 50 percent and resistance by up to 30 percent as health drops, shared with nearby allies at half strength, plus a stomp and tail slam. These closely mirror the official TLC dossier, which describes a berserker rage that deepens as the Giga is wounded, shares part of its fury with allies, and punishes attackers behind it. Crunch 518’s first look at the concept art put it more simply: the closer a wounded Giga is pushed to the brink the more dangerous it becomes, and creatures that crowd around its feet may meet “a crushing answer of its own”. Because the wiki and the dossier overlap so closely, we cannot say which numbers are final. The official posts give the TLC date as 5 November 2026 (Crunches 529 and 530), after earlier posts said 6 November.

What the game gets right, and what it invents

• Right: a giant apex predator. The real animal was probably the top predator of its environment, with an enormous skull. ARK’s Giga fills the same role in its ecosystem.
• Right, loosely: the shared fury. The overhauled Giga’s ability to pass its rage on to allies echoes the pack-hunting idea. It is a game mechanic dressed in a real debate, and science has not shown that Giganotosaurus hunted in packs.
• Invented: the rage itself. Nothing in the fossil record shows how a Giganotosaurus reacted to injury. The berserker behaviour, and the species name furiosa, are the game’s own.
• Displaced: the range. The real animal is known only from Patagonia. The wiki lists wild Gigas on many ARK maps, because the game puts its giants wherever players want to meet them.
• Invented: the water weakness. The wiki notes that a Giga can drown quickly, a balance choice rather than something the fossils show.

One more difference concerns how you get a Giga at all. The dossier for the overhauled creature, published in Crunch 527, says earning it means beating alpha-level threats to get its attention and then surviving what it calls an omega-level fight, in which you let the Giga tire itself against you before provoking its rage and wearing it down. That is a story about the creature’s character as much as a taming method, and it is a long way from a fossil in a dry riverbed. Our Giga guide sets out what is confirmed and what is not.

Where the real animal and the game meet

The Giganotosaurus is a reminder that ARK’s predators are built from real science that is still moving. The animal was 12 to 13 metres long on current estimates, but its weight is argued over by nearly a factor of three. It was part of a family of giants whose group behaviour is still a guess, and it was found by a man in a dune buggy. The game takes that uncertainty and turns it into a creature that gets angrier the more it is hurt.

If you want the broader picture, the ARK history and lore overview sets out the universe the creature lives in, and the Tyrannosaurus rex article covers the animal the Giga is always compared with. For the practical side, our Giga taming guide lists the wiki-checked requirements and the date caveat for the 5 November overhaul.

See a Giga trap in the game

Raconin’s video “Why Everyone’s Using This New Giga Trap Meta” shows the trap build he uses on a Giganotosaurus. It was published before the 5 November overhaul, so check the in-game dossier before copying it. Click to load it here, or watch it on his channel.

Gameplay video4:37▶

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