RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 Growth Patterns of birds, dinosaurs and reptiles: Are differences real or apparent? JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 597260 DO 10.1101/597260 A1 Brunner, Norbert A1 Kühleitner, Manfred A1 Nowak, Werner-Georg A1 Renner-Martin, Katharina A1 Scheicher, Klaus YR 2019 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/04/02/597260.abstract AB Systematics of animals was done on their appearance or genetics. One can also ask about similarities or differences in the growth pattern. Quantitative studies of the growth of dinosaurs have made possible comparisons with modern animals, such as the discovery that dinosaurs grew in relation to their size faster than modern reptiles. However, these studies relied on only a few growth models. If these models are false, what about the conclusions? This paper fits growth data to a more comprehensive class of models, defined by the von Bertalanffy-Pütter differential equation. Applied to data about dinosaurs, reptiles and birds, the best fitting models confirmed that dinosaurs may have grown faster than alligators. However, compared to modern broiler chicken, this difference was small.