Relative size of giraffes

SCIENCE SKETCH: a quick look at some new science

Giraffes have a gigantic relative called Sivatherium giganteum, which happens to be extinct. It wasn't as tall but apparently it was massive. Wanting to know just how massive, researchers did a 3D skeletal reconstruction and calculated an estimate of its mass. 

They report that the animal was not nearly as heavy as an elephant, as had been popularly claimed. But it was still possibly “the largest ruminant mammal that has ever existed.” Check out the study in Biology Letters.

(Opinions vary as to what the extinct giraffid looked like and I need a break from sketching actual giraffes, so here's the only other living member of the family: the much smaller okapi.)

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Okapi, sketched right off the Wikipedia page