It's all relative I suppose, no? They were fairly clear on the scale right in the section you quoted, right at the top:

> With an estimated total length of half a meter, Titanokorys was a giant compared to most animals that lived in the seas at that time, most of which barely reached the size of a pinky finger.

you left out the part of the quote that gives it context. "compared to most animals that lived in the seas at that time, most of which barely reached the size of a pinky finger."

Yes, but with the headline and the guy talking 'massive'... they could have included a 'relative to' or something? I was expecting some kind of deep sea leviathan.

'Dog-sized animal species discovered...' gets a lot less clicks.

The relation was made in the headline. It stands to reason that a massive half billion year old animal would be massive relative to other animals from a half billion years ago.

Does the average person have a good sense of how big animals were 500 million years ago vs. 250-300 million years ago? The latter of which was quite big, and any 'massive' from there on would be fitting by modern standards.

The average interested person would have, yes. That would include anybody who's watched any of the relevant PBS Nova programming, or any of David Attenborough's work, etc. - you don't need to have kept your head in the journals to be informed at that level.

If, instead of calling it half a meter, they had called it "10 times the length of other animals of its time", maybe you would still be impressed.

Yes, it's a click bait title.

Yes, it's still fascinating and mind boggling if you know a little of the background.

I didn't say it wasn't interesting. But it would have probably been even more interesting without building it up as 'massive creature' that's actually the size of my cat.