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Imho, a Spino could have waded into a river, settled down into a rough C-shape open to the faster water, and waited with its snout tip in the water. The sailed back and tail would shade the water, and the body would’ve created a pocket of still, sheltered water. That would attract fish that the spino could then detect and snap up with little to no effort.
@@Redbeardblondie it lived in a delta, basically a large wetland where water flow is slow and the river’s width greatly expanded. I highly doubt it hunted that way. IMO it’s more likely it waited in relatively shallow water (this animal was massive) held its head out of the water and relied on eyesight to detect the shadows of larger fish, which it then quickly grabbed.
Polar bears, if you looked at their skeletons would appear to be essentially terrestrial, but they are documented as being capable of hunting underwater. Given the range of aquatic specialisations seen in spinosaur fossilised skeletal elements, it seems highly unlikely that they were incapable of subaquatic hunting. I suspect that they utilised a variety of hunting methods.
This is similar to what I've been thinking recently, which is quite simply, why not both? Considering it was such a large animal living in such close proximity to large bodies of water and rivers, the ability to swim - even if at rather slow speeds at the water's surface - could very well have been beneficial for traversal between hunting spots, rest stops and the like, while a Heron-like method could be employed when feeding. The problem that I've seen seems to be that evolution is so often driven by food that other pathways to certain adaptations can be forgotten in the process of understanding why they are present.
Yup, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle too. When hunting or walking/swimming around, an animal will use its limbs and tail in any method that yields it the most results with the lowest energy expenditure. Maybe a spinosaur will stand like a heron next to shallow water, allowing it to see what's going on above the water -- such as competing spinosaurs or other large predators it needs to be aware of. And when it meets a large body of water with plenty of food, it perhaps goes croc mode for a while. I do agree with team Heron that its relatively tall body cross section seems to suggest it was good at walking, so I doubt it needed its front limbs for that.
here is my analogy: show somebody who does NOT already know the answer a hippo skeleton and a rhino skeleton and ask them which is the aquatic animal and they are going to struggle to give you a straight answer. the skeleton does not tell you shit about buoyancy, it's all about muscle mass percentage, you can see this even in humans, a small change in muscle percentage can change a human from floating on water to sinking if they're not fighting it. and even if spinosaurus was naturally buoyant, so what? sea birds can dive, waterfowl can dive, and of course humans can dive and we are not even aquatic animals, we just figured out how to do it despite the fact that we are in no way suited to that lifestyle because we like pearls and shellfish. the whole stability argument also holds little water (pun intended) humans aren't stable in the water either (our torso area is more buoyant than our heads are) but we've figured it out. not even like being stable in the water matters at all when you're diving, all you need is to be able to know where is up (which is EASIER when you're naturally buoyant) and a way to get back there.
Your comment gave me an insight into the fact that spinosaurus was partially endothermic and used the sail to heat itself whilst being submerged other than said sail which charged up it's ability to react faster. I've left a broader comment in the forum. Thanks.
The running gag among palentology content creators to never want to discuss spinosaurus to avoid getting lots of angry comments is something that always humors and disappoints me
It annoys me because this is science at work and it is an excellent opportunity to educate the public about the process of scientific discourse. It shows the public that scientists arnt just following the results of one study blindly and that these "heated" debates are crucial for understanding and consensus. Why complain about the process??? It's also just incredibly disengenous because controversial topics drive views and drive engagement. They can *say* they dont like arguments in the comments, but those arguments directly drive the spread of thier videos. So... 🙄
Dr. Nizar can't catch a break, I got to interview him for my dissertation a couple of weeks ago, hes really nice but also very busy. My armchair take on Spinosaurus is that it was probably capable of hunting in both methods, it has a perfect build to sit down in flowing rivers and divert the flow of water to it's front half, any fish looking for food along the riverbanks would be pushed into it's kill zone and grabbed.
I think this whole thing would make for a great sitcom. Imagine, 4 paleontologists sharing a flat (apartment) and they constantly argue about spino, one uping each other in every episode.
For me, I'd like to think of Spinosaurus, given current studies, as an opportunist, and changed up its feeding strategies in occurence with the locale it was residing in at the moment, similarly to how brown bears do when moving from one place to another. Given the adaptations it had for semi-aquatic locomotion, it was capable of diving to hunt for prey, but only if was in an environment where water was deep enough, and there was not more readily accessible prey around. If it found itself on more shallower streams, however, it would opt to being a wader to snatch up prey from the water's edge like a heron. And with a recent study showing that it was also capable of bringing down terrestrial animals, if no aquatic prey was available or became scarce, it could switch to either grabbing up decently sized dinosaurs, or bully other predators off their kills with it's intimidating size and weaponry. So that's my take on Spinosaurus: Depending on whatever situation the animals found themselves in at the time, they would change up tactics in order to survive, whether to dive, wade, hunt or scavenge.
Hear me out. Spinosaurus was an ant eater. Hated water. And the big sail on its back was for gliding. Yes it could fly. It would turn sideways in the wind. Might have had lasers on it’s head
This is obviously an example of convergent evolution with laser headed sharks. And the lasers are red of course. They channel the dark side of the force
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I said it once before and I say it again, if it wasn’t a swimmer, it would still definitely have spend around very deep-shallow waters (2-4 meters) were it would still stand but still very submerged(far from the shoreline). Since being a Giant predator, it would likely had hunted bigger pray like Sawfish, which do hang around in shallower waters, but still far from the shoreline. being thin and streamline would also helped in walk through deeper waters and it’s paddle like tail May even helped it for tight turns. But that’s just my hypothesis
That scenario might explain the sail if it had a temperature-regulation function, since it presumably didn't have blubber and spent significant amounts of time partially submerged. Maybe the sail could allow it to spend more time hunting mostly submerged by catching sunlight and warming the rest of its body.
There is a popular hypothesis within the paleontology communities on Reddit that states that spinosaurus wasn't a wader or a diver, but instead hunted like an Orinoco crocodile; floating over the water's surface before lunging at prey swimming below it, but not flat-out diving underwater rapidly or corralling shoals of fish like a penguin. The evidence is its body shape, which they liken to diving semi-aquatic, ambush-hunting birds like pelicans and petrels, and its skull shape, which is wide at the base and narrow at the tip like an Orinoco crocodile (which also happens to be a proficient hunter of large fish).
Spino has a deep, skinny body... which is one of the reasons models had it flopping over instead of floating, so I'm not sure how they drew that parallel. Birds like Pelicans and coromonts have wings they can use to stabilize thier bodies on and in the water, and Crocs especially are wide and flat, which is perfect for floating around.
@@patreekotime4578Also the commentator completely ignores the fact that Orinoco crocodiles *is* a true apex predator thag consumes and hunts a wide variety of prey especially terrestrial ones. Even jagurs avoid them. Something many people defiantly ignore about spinosaurus too
I personally coined the term "Crisis on Infinite Spinosaurus" to describe the many contradicting hypotheses regarding poor ol' speen back in 2014 with Ibrahim's first reconstruction.
I like to imagine that all of the researchers are in on how roundabout this all is, but they all mutually agree to do it anyway as some kind of means of securing funds for their own projects
I personally think the tail was just their so spinosaurus could swim around, not dive or hunt, better in its watery environment, pretty handy if you live in a big river system biom like the kemkem or modern day Amazon
My personal favorite interpretation is somewhere in the middle. I can't imagine a Spinosaurus pursuiting fish by swimming in deep water, but I could totally see it being kind of like a hippo. Not exactly good at swimming, but still submerging itself in shallow water from time to time and pushing itself towards prey by walking/"running" across the river floor (as close as Spinosaurus could get to running, anyway). I still think it would mostly wade across the shore, but diving to get a better chance at catching fish doesn't seem out of the picture. It's obviously more of a hunch than anything, but its just what seems most intuitive to me, given what we know about the animal.
I think spino curled up into a wheel shaped and rolled around on its sail to move around. Thats why it's legs are so small, so they can fold under itself to make it a wheel
Definitely Cormorant. The Heron analogy is all wrong for Spinosaurus, given the rearward location of it's center of mass. Although the Heron analogy might work for less derived Spinosaurs.
If spinosaurus was fully aquatic and partially endothermic the sail could have absorbed heat allowing it to maintain body temperature for longer while floating in water that would have otherwise been too cold extending the amount of time it could hunt every day. The sail absorbing heat from sunlight before the water it was in had heated up sufficiently to otherwise allow it to hunt. Edit, imagine it lying fully submerged apart from it's dark sail supply warm blood as it floated in wait of the sawfish below, as the day heated up it would turn away from the sun to regulate it's temperature accordingly.
Even if it's not submerged, just standing in water all day will suck the heat out of your body. And not moving very much means it isnt keeping its body warm through walking or running.
One thing you can say about Spinosaurus, it’s one of the few Dinosaurs that’s had such radically different makeovers since it’s discovery. Regardless of what form it takes or how it’s portrayed whether it’s; A generic Carnosaur with a big sail A roided up Baryonyx terrorising Isla Sorna Battling alongside a Tyrannosaurus & Saichania Running rampant on the streets of Dublin Swimming like a monster Heron in Morocco Next to Tyrannosaurus, it’s one of the most famous megatheropods there is.
As unsatisfying as it may seem, the scientific community has and will continue to fight over your boy. Is it not the nature of science to perpetually challenge itself in the quest to understand the universe and its contents? I'm sorry, but you, I, or anyone will likely never live to see the end of this, if there even is an end, the same way Sir Richard Owen would never guess the terrible reptiles he named so would turn out to be the miraculous, fantastic utterly-alien things we know them as today...
I used to be pretty hardcore on the side of Spino being very much a croc mimic but given the scrutiny that the hypothesis has been under I can’t really make a strong argument to back it. Alternatively, I think it’s honestly really fascinating to imagine these Rex-sized mega theropods lazily floating along the shallow waters of a mangrove swamp, their spines and heads poking up from the water before reaching down to catch fish. It feels so much more different from the bloodthirsty Tyrannosaur killer of jp3
I wonder if it was semi-aquatic if it would have occasionally hunted in tide pools. I don’t really have much of a reason to think they would do that but the idea of that ever being a thing seems cool to me.
For some reason, I think of a Grizzly Bear as a comparison to the Spino's hunting habits. Grizzlies are heavy, muscular animals who are absolutely fantastic at catching fish. They don't necessarily look like they would be great at watersports since they're bulky and muscular, but they are. They can swim well enough and dive to catch Salmon during the spawning season. They have bodies more adjusted to land travel, but in many areas they have adapted very well to catch most of their caloric intake in the form of fish. Maybe Spino did the same thing, thriving around river rapids but capable of hiking also.
Considering Spino's bone density, I'd think it be far easier for it to be able to dive underwater or be partially submerged rather than floating on the surface; it's not exactly a sailboat here.
Let me simplify - No it isn't - Yes it is -No it isn't - Yes it is - No it isn't - Yes it is -isn't - is - isn't - is - you don't know anything - more than you ! Nice to see that even scientists come down to the UA-cam level of debate we all enjoy ....
I have no qualifications, but personally I don't buy the 'tail was a display structure' hypothesis. Any time paleontologists can't explain why an animal has a feature they just say "idk, it was used for display or something", but such a tail has an extremely obvious practical use. I can see the spine on its back being used as a display structure, but the fact that no other theropod (to my knowledge) had a tail like spinosaurus is very suspect. If other indisputably terrestrial dinosaurs had a similar tail I may have believed it.
Honestly if we ever get footprints it would help a lot to determine what kind of lifestyle it had. Granted, fossilized footprints are extremely rare Edit: finding specimens (or more if there has already been ones found) would also be a big help
Honestly, I think a hardline between wading or swimming is reductive. It could've been a wading/ambush predator that would swim about to different locations to hunt.
If it didn't have a MASSIVE sail, I could believe it might be fully aquatic. However, considering how un-hydrodynamic the sail is and how it significantly elevates the creature's centre of gravity (making it liable to flip onto its back), I think it can only be reasonably considered that Spinosaurus had a more "heron" style of hunting strategy. Of course, we are unlikely to ever know for sure.
Proponents of subaquaeous feeding suggest Spinosaur was an ambush predator, so it didn't need to swim fast with that thing. Plus, aquatic organisms tend to develop dorsal fins to prevent spinning
I started wonder while watching this, if the sail was a useful signal to other big (semi-)terrestrial predators to stay away from where a spinosaurus was halfway under water, so as to not disturb the waters that had to stay undisturbed for a huge spinosaurus to have a chance at a meal... crocs hide very well in water, but they are also out for terrestrial animals, while spinosaurus may have relied more on fish and other water creatures, and thus maybe did not benefit from being accidentally overrun while submerged, especially by big predators it could not take down. At the same time, it may have been big enough to be pretty inconspicuous to passing prey in the water, especially if camouflage-colored...
One way out of the conundrum is to work out what sort of river the mega-heron would have found most conducive to its lifestyle. I would hypothesise that the sail-backed spinosaurs lived in rivers which had fewer good fishing spots (which would need to be defended) and the plainer non sail-backed morphs would have lived in habitats more suited to their way of life. I would also hypothesise that these animals were feasting in epic fashion at some times of year and were barely ticking over at other times, therefore the bones will more resemble those of a large poikilothermic crocodile than the bones of a similarly sized predatory therapod.
It seems that the skeleton is a composite of several individuals. We could compare the fossils with other spinosaur species to understand its structure.
I don’t think the two ideas are mutually exclusive, I think it likely would stalk the water edge like a Heron but was also capable of then diving to chase prey when needed.
My hypothesis (I'm not an expert so take this with a pile of salt): Spinosaurus couldn't dive, but it could swim and fish at the surface of the water, sort of like dabbling ducks, with its snout, arms, legs and tail submerged. This would explain both its wading and swimming adaptations. Display features like the sail and the crest would be above the water, which would make it easier for Spinos to recognise each other. A problem with this hypothesis is that, while there was a paper that suggested Spino couldn't dive (as shown in the video), it also suggests it would be unstable while floating.
As a radiologist with just hobby level of interest in comparative biology I'm not exactly qualified to talk about this, but here's my "2 cents" on the matter. I'm inclined to think this was a versatile shallow water predator, probably coming from a terrestrial ancestor that started exploiting alternative food sources and gradually evolved towards an aquatic lifestyle but reached a good enough balance along the way and "settled" on this "half way" form because it proved successful enough to thrive in its ecosystem. I don't think such a large animal would have actually chased prey by swimming long distance at speed simply because of the enormous amount of energy required to do that without fully aquatic adaptations (like a dolphin), but it most likely could do short bursts of speed near a shore (burst out like a crock or plunge in like a bear, probably both) and also dive a few meters to snatch an unsuspecting nearby fish, all the while being a good enough steady swimmer to move around a wide area over water (thus avoiding conflicts with land predators).
We know for a fact that spino ate onchopristis, a giant 4m fish. Such a fish wouldn't even be able to fit in water that was shallow enough for spino to wade in. The only way it could catch them was by being an active swimmer or diver.
@dankykongmax2786 statistically, we should assume that what we find in it's stomach was a natural part of its diet. Sure it's possible that it was a one-off or scavenging event, but the chances of that being fossilized is extremely low.
@JohnyG29 can you give any examples of a 4 metre long fish inhabiting water that's only 2 metres deep? Additionally onchopristis was not related to sawfish, so any comparisons made are tentative.
They could have jumped up and down with little swimming like hippos 🦛. The habitat of Spinosaurus was a vast shallow sea 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊. So shallow water includes the open ocean.
My personal hypothesis is that Spinosaurus might have punted/walked along the bottom of water bodies like a hippo. Similar to wading, but fully submerged. Its dense leg bones could stabilize it, and it wouldn't need to go into deep water or dive, but lung from below at prey (terrestrial or aquatic). Its tail might provide just enough power for this, as it's not full swimming.
I could see a high buoyancy being an extremely advantageous feature for a diving animal like this. A Spinosaurus would likely only need a few seconds underwater to catch a fish then simply use its buoyancy to drag it back up the surface while saving energy. A massive fluked tail and a long neck could help it fight against its own buoyancy and get as low to the river floor as possible
Personally i think its very plausable that spinosaures sort of was a in-between in feeding methods i would guess that it mostly lived like a herring due to the skull and location of nasal passages but it could probably also swim and dive maybe it wasnt the best swimmer but it probably could forage and catch fish in a more opportunistic way when swimming to new locations or moving around also its very possibly that age played a part in how they hunted juveniles could've spent for time in the water but adults probably were more suited to the herring lifestyle
Amazing, I personally think that Spinosaurus aegyptiacus might have had the capacity to pursue prey underwater and wait on the shallow riverbanks for fish to pass by and get snatched. Many animals are capable of doing more than what their anatomies were intended for. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus had the right anatomy to pursue prey, like a paddle-like tail, feet with flat bottoms, possibly the right amount of bone density, etc. But Spinosaurus aegyptiacus also had the right anatomy to wait on the shallow riverbanks to obtain food like sensory pits, possibly the right center of mass, possibly the right amount of bone density, etc. Obviously, some of these pieces of anatomy prove more than just one theory. Those are just my personal thoughts and opinions on this hot topic of debate. Good job, keep up the good work.
Honestly, I feel like a primarily aquatic hunter is most likely for it. My reasoning: 1. It has a giant paddle tail. Yes, it _could_ be a display structure, but structures like that on newts and lizards don't have bones to them, because they're explicitly not meant to be used. Now, obviously Spinosaurus is a little bigger than those animals, but I think it'd be worth doing a study on the tail spines to see whether they would have experienced stress from swimming in life or not. 2. It has stumpy little legs. Wading hunters like to be _tall,_ so that they can wade in deeper water, as well as casting minimal shadow and preventing their prey from seeing them. Modern storks and herons are tall, as are azhdarchid pterosaurs (while they weren't waders, they still had a stork-like lifestyle), and most spinosaurids fall into this category, up to and including Spinosaurus's closest relatives. Spinosaurus itself, however, doesn't, which indicates to me that it had a different lifestyle. 3. Its evolutionary history. While I haven't done much research and only have a layperson's knowledge of such things, spinosaurs seem to me to show a trend towards an aquatic lifestyle. Compare a creature like Irritator (smaller body, little to no sail, long legs, tapered tail) to a creature like Suchomimus (much larger body, sail along the back, broader tail). I don't know if there are studies done on Suchomimus's or Ichthyovenator's lifestyles, but I wouldn't be surprised if they proved to be fairly aquatic hunters, perhaps preferring to wade on the shoreline and dive after larger prey. That also seems to track with the fish evolving around them - again, I don't know of any kind of study, but the fish of the Kem Kem Beds are _immense,_ and the only fit for apex predator of that ecosystem is Spinosaurus. While some of those fish would have likely come near the shore, many of them would have simply been too big to commonly live at the depths Spinosaurus could comfortably wade to. In fact, I posit that against the idea that secondarily aquatic large-bodied animals are typically marine - Spinosaurus lived in a very deep, ecologically rich river system, which formed a relatively constricted environment. Given that it seems to have no preference for moving out to sea, I posit that Spinosaurus's size and hyper-specialization are a sort of "island" gigantism, where the "island" is the river system it was limited to, as well as being the end result of an arms race with large-bodied freshwater fish. 4. Didn't I hear somewhere that isotope studies done on the bones show that they spent a good deal of time submerged? While I'm no expert on how isotopes work, if _all_ the bones show that, then surely that means it must have spent time with most of its body underwater. If, on the other hand, the lower leg bones show that, whereas the tips of the neural spines don't, it seems much more likely to have been a wader than a pursuit predator.
My theory was that it may have shifted as it aged. In its younger years, it was more aquatic in its hunting methods, and maybe shifted to heron-style hunting as it reached full size. It’s not perfect, but it does seem at least plausible.
The thing that leaps out at me is that underwater hunters tend to get streamlined fairly rapidly in the course of evolution because large surfaces create so much drag. This is true of fish, mammals and other reptiles, and other groups such as insects that have many aquatic lineages. The retention of a large sail in Spinosaurus as an underwater hunter makes the idea seem a bit silly.
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For now, I generally lean towards the wader hypothesis. One theory about the sail I've heard that I thought was interesting was that it was to make Spinosaurus look even bigger; it did share its habitat with more macro-predatory dinosaurs such as Carcharodontosaurus, who could've considered it as a potential meal. But whatever's going on with it...round and round, round and round the debate goes. When it's gonna stop, nobody knows....
I once heard that Spinosaur would most likely float in the water too. That got me thinking that it might act much like a duck or goose, but with actual teeth and claws. Later on, I even have a theory that Spinosaur might actually look like a Muscovy duck too.
It just seems to me like the tail would have needed unusually beefy to counter balance that long body, sail, and massive head. The rear legs would be bearing most of the weight so the front limbs didn't have to adapt much.
I notice that some of these animals had sails and some didn't. Could it be that the species with sails inhabited cool waters and the sail, pumped full of blood and held above the water, was a means of maintaining warmth.
Or that it's just completely a display mechanism. Whatever the reason, the lack of it is other closely related animals means it could not have been essential for survival or locomotion. Like the argument of pterosaurs using thier head crests for steering.... the apparent extreme sexual dimorphism of this feature rules it out as being essential for flight.
I think it did a bit of both! Compare it to its reletives like Baryonix which are pure waders and spino obviously has more adaptations for swimming but still a lot of wading adaptations too.
I believe Spniosaurus was primarially like a heron but it had started to slowly evolve towards a fully aquatic life style. Out of all in Spinosardea family it is the most aquatic like dinosaur found so far, so it would be interesting if a new species was found living later in Africa and was even more aquatic.
May have also been the opposite. Younger ones would be able to snap things up quicker, but would be limited to smaller fish. Standing in very shallow water, eating fish and water bugs. Once they get older, they are heavier, and clumsier, and after their initial lunge, may fail to capture their prey, and have to swim after it.
I'm Team Duck, aka surface swimmer. I don't think they were Team Gator (underwater swimmer) based on the evidence of some of those recent studies like they're computer models. But I don't think they were Team Heron (wader) either based on how short those hind legs are. Waders tend to have long hind legs so that they can step into deeper waters without having to swim, and yet Spinosaurus had proportionally short legs. It's not going to step into very deep of water to catch big fish, and we know they went after large fish. Therefore, I think they swam on the surface. Not quickly mind you. They would swim slowly along the surface -like a duck- and that big sail would act as bait. On the side facing away from the sun, it would produce a shadow to lure in prey, and on the side facing the sun, a bright display that too would lure prey. The fish would approach, and with their highly sensitive nose dipping in the water, Spinosaurus would lunge at the fish that would swim close enough towards them.
In the past 4 years since the 2020 reconstruction was first published, I can understand why other paleontologists disagree with the idea of Spinosaurus being an aquatic pursuit predator, but I diagree with the fact that the tail was only a display function. Animals today can use one bodypart for many different things, and I believe that the paddle tail was used for both display and swimming. And yet, hypothetically speaking, even if it wasn't used as a display feature in life, it already had a massive sail on its back, along with a bony crest on its head, so what other reason was there for Spinosaurines to evolve tall neural spines and chevrons for their tails? This is just my personal hypothesis, but years ago I remember seeing a picture showing how the paddle tail would look if it was extremely flexible. And, considering that the neural spines prevent such flexibility, that should indicate that the tail was rather stiff in life, especially at the end of the tail. Considering this, and the strong leg muscles that were attached to the base of the tail, I believe that the tail of Spinosaurus was also used as propulsional support when swimming. The sheer stiffness of the tail would help create a powerful thrust when using its leg muscles to move the tail side to side. In other words, it would help Spinosaurus swim faster, diving or no diving debate notwithstanding.
Personally speaking, the only issue I have with the "sail as a display feature" theory is that, at least so far, display features on most dinosaurs tend to occur on or around their skulls, and on theropods particularly they're not very large, if they're even there at all. And it's particularly odd that such a feature is not ancestral to Spinosaurids as a whole, since many of the species that, again, we know of so far don't even have them, whereas we have found intermediary forms for other families/suborders, like Stegosaurids and Ceratopsids, that already have them and further indicate that such features were not only widespread but occurred extremely early on in their evolution. That being said, I do like the interoperation that it was used as both a display feature and a semiaquatic lifestyle, especially since in general the idea that display structures were used for multiple things seems to becoming more and more likely anyway.
All the species in this family have at least few adaptations for semiacuatic life or close to water life to hunt. Spinosaurus is the one with more adaptations to acuatic environment, so it's weird to have some scientist saying that it was not capable to dive, or it would be a bad swimmer? All in it's morphologic peculiarities looks designed for that purpose. Way more elongated body than other spinosauroids. Hind legs dramatically reduced making it very slow and graceless on land, but making it more hidrodynamic. The tail and the sail does not make any sense on land, and you don't see those features in Baryonychinae which had common terophod proportions. Why and apex predator evolved that way?? Well, obviously evolution takes time, and Spinosaurus' tail was not as efficient as fully aquatic crocodilians for example, but that cannot be a reason for a new debate. Was spinosaurus acuatic or at least semiacuatic? YES. Was a good swimmer? YES. And comparing to fully acuatic reptiles? NO. It seems like if they would have another 5-10 millions years to develop that body, they could have ended being fully acuatic. Idk but that's what common sense says to me. If it was not aquatic, Spino did all the changes wrong for a terrestrial life then... XD
I want to be witty, but evidence thus far seem evenly matched: - On one hand the wader hypothesis has to content with the short limbs and large tail fluke - On the other, the swimmer hypothesis has to content with the inland distribution of Spinosaurus
for all we know it could have swam and lightly dived and then gone to wade in the shallows during high tide to catch fish as they escape lower waters, I feel like trying to come up with an exact ritual for their predation tactics are going to forever be lost to the bias of what exists right now.
I’m really surprised that nobody has done a study comparing Spinosaurus to a duck. Just looking at such an animal that’s got short legs but is still bipedal, if you compare it to a duck it’s not all that different. Obviously this is just my own observation and not based on direct comparisons of center of gravity, etc - I’ll leave that to the people who know what they’re doing - but if I were to guess I’d say that it probably swam and dove like a duck does, only it would be going after fish instead of pond plants. I call this the Murder Duck Hypothesis.
I want to say team wading, but I'm in the middle of an art project, which later in part 3 will feature swimming Spinosaurus after a fight between a pair of Tarbosaurus & a Spinosaurus/Baryonyx hybrid which ends when a Dienosuchus killing the enraged murderous hybrid Spinosaur
soon this thing will have a trunk and a pteranodon head crest if this keeps up. on a more serious note we still don't truly know how its arms look like , and possibly its neck.
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Imho, a Spino could have waded into a river, settled down into a rough C-shape open to the faster water, and waited with its snout tip in the water. The sailed back and tail would shade the water, and the body would’ve created a pocket of still, sheltered water. That would attract fish that the spino could then detect and snap up with little to no effort.
@@Redbeardblondie it lived in a delta, basically a large wetland where water flow is slow and the river’s width greatly expanded. I highly doubt it hunted that way. IMO it’s more likely it waited in relatively shallow water (this animal was massive) held its head out of the water and relied on eyesight to detect the shadows of larger fish, which it then quickly grabbed.
Polar bears, if you looked at their skeletons would appear to be essentially terrestrial, but they are documented as being capable of hunting underwater. Given the range of aquatic specialisations seen in spinosaur fossilised skeletal elements, it seems highly unlikely that they were incapable of subaquatic hunting. I suspect that they utilised a variety of hunting methods.
These scientists just want ultimatum. Not the both senaria😅
This is similar to what I've been thinking recently, which is quite simply, why not both? Considering it was such a large animal living in such close proximity to large bodies of water and rivers, the ability to swim - even if at rather slow speeds at the water's surface - could very well have been beneficial for traversal between hunting spots, rest stops and the like, while a Heron-like method could be employed when feeding.
The problem that I've seen seems to be that evolution is so often driven by food that other pathways to certain adaptations can be forgotten in the process of understanding why they are present.
@@Connection_Error-px7bnexactly. I’m surprised no one has suggested in a paper both wading and diving.
Yup, I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle too. When hunting or walking/swimming around, an animal will use its limbs and tail in any method that yields it the most results with the lowest energy expenditure.
Maybe a spinosaur will stand like a heron next to shallow water, allowing it to see what's going on above the water -- such as competing spinosaurs or other large predators it needs to be aware of. And when it meets a large body of water with plenty of food, it perhaps goes croc mode for a while.
I do agree with team Heron that its relatively tall body cross section seems to suggest it was good at walking, so I doubt it needed its front limbs for that.
here is my analogy: show somebody who does NOT already know the answer a hippo skeleton and a rhino skeleton and ask them which is the aquatic animal and they are going to struggle to give you a straight answer. the skeleton does not tell you shit about buoyancy, it's all about muscle mass percentage, you can see this even in humans, a small change in muscle percentage can change a human from floating on water to sinking if they're not fighting it.
and even if spinosaurus was naturally buoyant, so what? sea birds can dive, waterfowl can dive, and of course humans can dive and we are not even aquatic animals, we just figured out how to do it despite the fact that we are in no way suited to that lifestyle because we like pearls and shellfish.
the whole stability argument also holds little water (pun intended) humans aren't stable in the water either (our torso area is more buoyant than our heads are) but we've figured it out. not even like being stable in the water matters at all when you're diving, all you need is to be able to know where is up (which is EASIER when you're naturally buoyant) and a way to get back there.
Going by this my theory of Spinosaurus using its sail to charge up a mouth laser may prove to be the most accurate depiction of the animal so far
Google 'Shockwave Spinosaurus'. Not too far off.
Spinosaurus with freaking lasers on their heads
Your comment gave me an insight into the fact that spinosaurus was partially endothermic and used the sail to heat itself whilst being submerged other than said sail which charged up it's ability to react faster.
I've left a broader comment in the forum.
Thanks.
Spinozilla
Solar beam
The running gag among palentology content creators to never want to discuss spinosaurus to avoid getting lots of angry comments is something that always humors and disappoints me
It has become the "mitochondria" of paleontology.
Spinosaurus becomes Spinozilla in the year 2055 be like....
It annoys me because this is science at work and it is an excellent opportunity to educate the public about the process of scientific discourse. It shows the public that scientists arnt just following the results of one study blindly and that these "heated" debates are crucial for understanding and consensus. Why complain about the process???
It's also just incredibly disengenous because controversial topics drive views and drive engagement. They can *say* they dont like arguments in the comments, but those arguments directly drive the spread of thier videos. So... 🙄
Ironically even angry comments are good for engagement for it’s best to give in to such content
ThErE wAs A nEw ArTiSts DeScRiPtIoN 8 hours AgO!!
Whoever invents the time machine, their first task is to settle the spinosaurus debate once and for all
I volunteer to go 🙋♂
@@BenGThomasTAKE ME WITH YOU!
Only to discover Spinousaurus looks and behave different every time you blink
@@qnebrathe spinosaurus behave differently when observed
@@BenGThomastake me too
Dr. Nizar can't catch a break, I got to interview him for my dissertation a couple of weeks ago, hes really nice but also very busy. My armchair take on Spinosaurus is that it was probably capable of hunting in both methods, it has a perfect build to sit down in flowing rivers and divert the flow of water to it's front half, any fish looking for food along the riverbanks would be pushed into it's kill zone and grabbed.
I think this whole thing would make for a great sitcom. Imagine, 4 paleontologists sharing a flat (apartment) and they constantly argue about spino, one uping each other in every episode.
four boneheads...
Big bang spinory
For me, I'd like to think of Spinosaurus, given current studies, as an opportunist, and changed up its feeding strategies in occurence with the locale it was residing in at the moment, similarly to how brown bears do when moving from one place to another.
Given the adaptations it had for semi-aquatic locomotion, it was capable of diving to hunt for prey, but only if was in an environment where water was deep enough, and there was not more readily accessible prey around. If it found itself on more shallower streams, however, it would opt to being a wader to snatch up prey from the water's edge like a heron.
And with a recent study showing that it was also capable of bringing down terrestrial animals, if no aquatic prey was available or became scarce, it could switch to either grabbing up decently sized dinosaurs, or bully other predators off their kills with it's intimidating size and weaponry.
So that's my take on Spinosaurus: Depending on whatever situation the animals found themselves in at the time, they would change up tactics in order to survive, whether to dive, wade, hunt or scavenge.
Hear me out. Spinosaurus was an ant eater. Hated water. And the big sail on its back was for gliding. Yes it could fly. It would turn sideways in the wind. Might have had lasers on it’s head
Might???
well now we have to debate what color the laser was.
I think you've figured it out!!
This is obviously an example of convergent evolution with laser headed sharks. And the lasers are red of course. They channel the dark side of the force
@ when something works nature copies it. Laser beams don’t fossilize well
This video was obviously made purely to show off Ben's impressive spinosaurus collection.
I'm so happy Wonder Artistic Models is getting traction!
They make breathtaking wooden skeletal models (basically if you took the cheap wooden skeletons from magazines, but then on juice and if they had all the effort put in to make them actually anatomically correct) and are based on my homecountry Chile!
I have their Sue T. rex model and I absolutely love it. Can't wait to order more of their stuff!
Hello! Thank you so much for your comment! We are glad that you are enjoying your T. rex model 😁👍
BTW, we love your artwork too 🤩
Spinosaurus had a subterranean life style like a mole.
I said it once before and I say it again, if it wasn’t a swimmer, it would still definitely have spend around very deep-shallow waters (2-4 meters) were it would still stand but still very submerged(far from the shoreline).
Since being a Giant predator, it would likely had hunted bigger pray like Sawfish, which do hang around in shallower waters, but still far from the shoreline.
being thin and streamline would also helped in walk through deeper waters and it’s paddle like tail May even helped it for tight turns.
But that’s just my hypothesis
I shall christen your hypothesis "the murder hippo hypothesis".
I think the massive rigid sail would have prevented it turning around quickly.
@@JohnyG29 when I’m saying “mostly submerged”, I referred to most of the back, not necessarily the Enormous sail.
Spinosaurus lived in a vast shallow sea 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊.
So shallow water includes the open ocean.
That scenario might explain the sail if it had a temperature-regulation function, since it presumably didn't have blubber and spent significant amounts of time partially submerged. Maybe the sail could allow it to spend more time hunting mostly submerged by catching sunlight and warming the rest of its body.
There is a popular hypothesis within the paleontology communities on Reddit that states that spinosaurus wasn't a wader or a diver, but instead hunted like an Orinoco crocodile; floating over the water's surface before lunging at prey swimming below it, but not flat-out diving underwater rapidly or corralling shoals of fish like a penguin. The evidence is its body shape, which they liken to diving semi-aquatic, ambush-hunting birds like pelicans and petrels, and its skull shape, which is wide at the base and narrow at the tip like an Orinoco crocodile (which also happens to be a proficient hunter of large fish).
Spino has a deep, skinny body... which is one of the reasons models had it flopping over instead of floating, so I'm not sure how they drew that parallel. Birds like Pelicans and coromonts have wings they can use to stabilize thier bodies on and in the water, and Crocs especially are wide and flat, which is perfect for floating around.
@@patreekotime4578Also the commentator completely ignores the fact that Orinoco crocodiles *is* a true apex predator thag consumes and hunts a wide variety of prey especially terrestrial ones. Even jagurs avoid them. Something many people defiantly ignore about spinosaurus too
“Reddit is my source” ah yes very trustworthy
@@patreekotime4578could spinosaurus not have stabilized itself with its big-ass arms?
@@patreekotime4578the walking posture for spinosaurus does make it look a lot like a duck
Spinosaurus is my favourite arboreal dinosaur.
I personally coined the term "Crisis on Infinite Spinosaurus" to describe the many contradicting hypotheses regarding poor ol' speen back in 2014 with Ibrahim's first reconstruction.
I like to imagine that all of the researchers are in on how roundabout this all is, but they all mutually agree to do it anyway as some kind of means of securing funds for their own projects
Except a lot of these papers are from people who don't have to survive on grants
I personally think the tail was just their so spinosaurus could swim around, not dive or hunt, better in its watery environment, pretty handy if you live in a big river system biom like the kemkem or modern day Amazon
"Baby, wake up. New Spinosaurus Lore just dropped."
Spinosaurus is having a never-ending identity crisis
My personal favorite interpretation is somewhere in the middle. I can't imagine a Spinosaurus pursuiting fish by swimming in deep water, but I could totally see it being kind of like a hippo. Not exactly good at swimming, but still submerging itself in shallow water from time to time and pushing itself towards prey by walking/"running" across the river floor (as close as Spinosaurus could get to running, anyway). I still think it would mostly wade across the shore, but diving to get a better chance at catching fish doesn't seem out of the picture.
It's obviously more of a hunch than anything, but its just what seems most intuitive to me, given what we know about the animal.
I think spino curled up into a wheel shaped and rolled around on its sail to move around. Thats why it's legs are so small, so they can fold under itself to make it a wheel
Cormorant vs heron.
Definitely Cormorant. The Heron analogy is all wrong for Spinosaurus, given the rearward location of it's center of mass. Although the Heron analogy might work for less derived Spinosaurs.
I think of spinosaurus like a swan, semi floating from one spot to the next to hunt like a heron
And this is why spinosaurus is my number one favorite dinosaur. All because of how weird it continues to be
Same, it stays my favorite no matter how much it changes, because it’s so weird
If spinosaurus was fully aquatic and partially endothermic the sail could have absorbed heat allowing it to maintain body temperature for longer while floating in water that would have otherwise been too cold extending the amount of time it could hunt every day.
The sail absorbing heat from sunlight before the water it was in had heated up sufficiently to otherwise allow it to hunt.
Edit, imagine it lying fully submerged apart from it's dark sail supply warm blood as it floated in wait of the sawfish below, as the day heated up it would turn away from the sun to regulate it's temperature accordingly.
Even if it's not submerged, just standing in water all day will suck the heat out of your body. And not moving very much means it isnt keeping its body warm through walking or running.
One thing you can say about Spinosaurus, it’s one of the few Dinosaurs that’s had such radically different makeovers since it’s discovery.
Regardless of what form it takes or how it’s portrayed whether it’s;
A generic Carnosaur with a big sail
A roided up Baryonyx terrorising Isla Sorna
Battling alongside a Tyrannosaurus & Saichania
Running rampant on the streets of Dublin
Swimming like a monster Heron in Morocco
Next to Tyrannosaurus, it’s one of the most famous megatheropods there is.
My boy... stop fighting over my boy...
they can go in and out like hippos does
As unsatisfying as it may seem, the scientific community has and will continue to fight over your boy. Is it not the nature of science to perpetually challenge itself in the quest to understand the universe and its contents? I'm sorry, but you, I, or anyone will likely never live to see the end of this, if there even is an end, the same way Sir Richard Owen would never guess the terrible reptiles he named so would turn out to be the miraculous, fantastic utterly-alien things we know them as today...
I used to be pretty hardcore on the side of Spino being very much a croc mimic but given the scrutiny that the hypothesis has been under I can’t really make a strong argument to back it. Alternatively, I think it’s honestly really fascinating to imagine these Rex-sized mega theropods lazily floating along the shallow waters of a mangrove swamp, their spines and heads poking up from the water before reaching down to catch fish. It feels so much more different from the bloodthirsty Tyrannosaur killer of jp3
I wonder if it was semi-aquatic if it would have occasionally hunted in tide pools. I don’t really have much of a reason to think they would do that but the idea of that ever being a thing seems cool to me.
I misread tide pools as "Tide Pods" and now I'm just imagining tiny Spinosauruses swimming in detergent...
What is no one ever talk about a Spinosaurus behaving like an orinoco crocodile
For some reason, I think of a Grizzly Bear as a comparison to the Spino's hunting habits. Grizzlies are heavy, muscular animals who are absolutely fantastic at catching fish. They don't necessarily look like they would be great at watersports since they're bulky and muscular, but they are. They can swim well enough and dive to catch Salmon during the spawning season. They have bodies more adjusted to land travel, but in many areas they have adapted very well to catch most of their caloric intake in the form of fish. Maybe Spino did the same thing, thriving around river rapids but capable of hiking also.
Considering Spino's bone density, I'd think it be far easier for it to be able to dive underwater or be partially submerged rather than floating on the surface; it's not exactly a sailboat here.
Let me simplify - No it isn't - Yes it is -No it isn't - Yes it is - No it isn't - Yes it is -isn't - is - isn't - is - you don't know anything - more than you !
Nice to see that even scientists come down to the UA-cam level of debate we all enjoy ....
I appreciated that Swimbo is colored the same as Totodile.
Never change, Spinosaurus.....
Oh wait, that's a poor choice of words.
I have no qualifications, but personally I don't buy the 'tail was a display structure' hypothesis. Any time paleontologists can't explain why an animal has a feature they just say "idk, it was used for display or something", but such a tail has an extremely obvious practical use. I can see the spine on its back being used as a display structure, but the fact that no other theropod (to my knowledge) had a tail like spinosaurus is very suspect. If other indisputably terrestrial dinosaurs had a similar tail I may have believed it.
Nature is weird sometimes
Honestly if we ever get footprints it would help a lot to determine what kind of lifestyle it had. Granted, fossilized footprints are extremely rare
Edit: finding specimens (or more if there has already been ones found) would also be a big help
Hippos are mentioned in other comments. They have very dense bones and cannot swim. They spend most of their time in water yet eat grass.
Honestly, I think a hardline between wading or swimming is reductive. It could've been a wading/ambush predator that would swim about to different locations to hunt.
Turns out Spinosaurus was really a mid Cretaceous street performing dinosaur
If it didn't have a MASSIVE sail, I could believe it might be fully aquatic. However, considering how un-hydrodynamic the sail is and how it significantly elevates the creature's centre of gravity (making it liable to flip onto its back), I think it can only be reasonably considered that Spinosaurus had a more "heron" style of hunting strategy. Of course, we are unlikely to ever know for sure.
Yeah it's not going underwater with that sail. Imagine trying to catch a fish, swimming underwater with that. A huge issue.
Proponents of subaquaeous feeding suggest Spinosaur was an ambush predator, so it didn't need to swim fast with that thing. Plus, aquatic organisms tend to develop dorsal fins to prevent spinning
@@Carlos-bz5oo Cool. I can certainly believe that. If it did have a padded tail then it must have spent time in the water.
@@Carlos-bz5ooyeah but all those animals have dorsal fins that are flexible and can stand up and down at will. Not a hard immobile bone spine.
I started wonder while watching this, if the sail was a useful signal to other big (semi-)terrestrial predators to stay away from where a spinosaurus was halfway under water, so as to not disturb the waters that had to stay undisturbed for a huge spinosaurus to have a chance at a meal... crocs hide very well in water, but they are also out for terrestrial animals, while spinosaurus may have relied more on fish and other water creatures, and thus maybe did not benefit from being accidentally overrun while submerged, especially by big predators it could not take down. At the same time, it may have been big enough to be pretty inconspicuous to passing prey in the water, especially if camouflage-colored...
The Great Spinosaurus War...aka Nerd Fight!
One way out of the conundrum is to work out what sort of river the mega-heron would have found most conducive to its lifestyle. I would hypothesise that the sail-backed spinosaurs lived in rivers which had fewer good fishing spots (which would need to be defended) and the plainer non sail-backed morphs would have lived in habitats more suited to their way of life. I would also hypothesise that these animals were feasting in epic fashion at some times of year and were barely ticking over at other times, therefore the bones will more resemble those of a large poikilothermic crocodile than the bones of a similarly sized predatory therapod.
That sail was obviously poorly reconstructed. It should look like helicopter rotor blades.
Spinosaurus don't swim, spinosaurus don't do the other thing too, what they do is, they do their best, and frankly that's all that matters.
Spinosaurus is just like me: allergic to normal. Me and Spiny think normal is boring
Apparently there were a lot of sawfish around in those days and either so delicious spinies had to have them or, they were very easy to catch😂
Why in the would would spino have super dense bones only seen in aquatic animals if it could not be aquatic 💀
clearly the sail developed as a dish to receive alien TV series such as "The Great Gooberman" and "Space Is Funky"
It seems that the skeleton is a composite of several individuals. We could compare the fossils with other spinosaur species to understand its structure.
I don’t think the two ideas are mutually exclusive, I think it likely would stalk the water edge like a Heron but was also capable of then diving to chase prey when needed.
My hypothesis (I'm not an expert so take this with a pile of salt):
Spinosaurus couldn't dive, but it could swim and fish at the surface of the water, sort of like dabbling ducks, with its snout, arms, legs and tail submerged.
This would explain both its wading and swimming adaptations. Display features like the sail and the crest would be above the water, which would make it easier for Spinos to recognise each other.
A problem with this hypothesis is that, while there was a paper that suggested Spino couldn't dive (as shown in the video), it also suggests it would be unstable while floating.
As a radiologist with just hobby level of interest in comparative biology I'm not exactly qualified to talk about this, but here's my "2 cents" on the matter. I'm inclined to think this was a versatile shallow water predator, probably coming from a terrestrial ancestor that started exploiting alternative food sources and gradually evolved towards an aquatic lifestyle but reached a good enough balance along the way and "settled" on this "half way" form because it proved successful enough to thrive in its ecosystem. I don't think such a large animal would have actually chased prey by swimming long distance at speed simply because of the enormous amount of energy required to do that without fully aquatic adaptations (like a dolphin), but it most likely could do short bursts of speed near a shore (burst out like a crock or plunge in like a bear, probably both) and also dive a few meters to snatch an unsuspecting nearby fish, all the while being a good enough steady swimmer to move around a wide area over water (thus avoiding conflicts with land predators).
We know for a fact that spino ate onchopristis, a giant 4m fish. Such a fish wouldn't even be able to fit in water that was shallow enough for spino to wade in. The only way it could catch them was by being an active swimmer or diver.
Maybe they were scavenging dead ones on shore? (i'm playing devils advocate here)
I disagree, many large fish inhabit very shallow waters, and modern day sawfish live in esturaies and rivers.
@dankykongmax2786 statistically, we should assume that what we find in it's stomach was a natural part of its diet. Sure it's possible that it was a one-off or scavenging event, but the chances of that being fossilized is extremely low.
@JohnyG29 can you give any examples of a 4 metre long fish inhabiting water that's only 2 metres deep?
Additionally onchopristis was not related to sawfish, so any comparisons made are tentative.
They could have jumped up and down with little swimming like hippos 🦛.
The habitat of Spinosaurus was a vast shallow sea 🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊🌊.
So shallow water includes the open ocean.
at this point I wouldn't be surprised if we found a perfectly preserved spinosaurus unambiguously riding a motorcycle
Swimbo reminds me of one of my favourite Pokemon, Totodile. They're both precious
Obviously it was a muscular legless swimmer with a trunk like an elephant seal.
Spinosaurus will never be truly understood. You're not alone Spino...me too
Found your channel while playing ARK one afternoon. Appreciate you keeping learning a fascinating experience. Swimbo is amazing
Team burrower, the spines were able to be plucked out and used as handy shovels
Humbug! Any one can see that Spino is built for speed. Like a cheetah. 🤣
My personal hypothesis is that Spinosaurus might have punted/walked along the bottom of water bodies like a hippo. Similar to wading, but fully submerged. Its dense leg bones could stabilize it, and it wouldn't need to go into deep water or dive, but lung from below at prey (terrestrial or aquatic). Its tail might provide just enough power for this, as it's not full swimming.
I could see a high buoyancy being an extremely advantageous feature for a diving animal like this. A Spinosaurus would likely only need a few seconds underwater to catch a fish then simply use its buoyancy to drag it back up the surface while saving energy. A massive fluked tail and a long neck could help it fight against its own buoyancy and get as low to the river floor as possible
Personally i think its very plausable that spinosaures sort of was a in-between in feeding methods i would guess that it mostly lived like a herring due to the skull and location of nasal passages but it could probably also swim and dive maybe it wasnt the best swimmer but it probably could forage and catch fish in a more opportunistic way when swimming to new locations or moving around also its very possibly that age played a part in how they hunted juveniles could've spent for time in the water but adults probably were more suited to the herring lifestyle
Amazing, I personally think that Spinosaurus aegyptiacus might have had the capacity to pursue prey underwater and wait on the shallow riverbanks for fish to pass by and get snatched. Many animals are capable of doing more than what their anatomies were intended for. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus had the right anatomy to pursue prey, like a paddle-like tail, feet with flat bottoms, possibly the right amount of bone density, etc. But Spinosaurus aegyptiacus also had the right anatomy to wait on the shallow riverbanks to obtain food like sensory pits, possibly the right center of mass, possibly the right amount of bone density, etc. Obviously, some of these pieces of anatomy prove more than just one theory. Those are just my personal thoughts and opinions on this hot topic of debate. Good job, keep up the good work.
happened to watch David Hone presentation on Spinosaurus just recently, good timing :D
Wasn't there another studie recently about spinosaurus not only eating fish, but also land animals?
It's just a big bear... Not like a grizzly bear, but a teddy bear; he just wants a hug!
Other sea creatures with a sail along the back use it to herd baitfish into an ambush. Eg sailfish
There's no #TeamWader, nor #TeamDiver, only #TeamSpino! 💚
Honestly, I feel like a primarily aquatic hunter is most likely for it. My reasoning:
1. It has a giant paddle tail. Yes, it _could_ be a display structure, but structures like that on newts and lizards don't have bones to them, because they're explicitly not meant to be used. Now, obviously Spinosaurus is a little bigger than those animals, but I think it'd be worth doing a study on the tail spines to see whether they would have experienced stress from swimming in life or not.
2. It has stumpy little legs. Wading hunters like to be _tall,_ so that they can wade in deeper water, as well as casting minimal shadow and preventing their prey from seeing them. Modern storks and herons are tall, as are azhdarchid pterosaurs (while they weren't waders, they still had a stork-like lifestyle), and most spinosaurids fall into this category, up to and including Spinosaurus's closest relatives. Spinosaurus itself, however, doesn't, which indicates to me that it had a different lifestyle.
3. Its evolutionary history. While I haven't done much research and only have a layperson's knowledge of such things, spinosaurs seem to me to show a trend towards an aquatic lifestyle. Compare a creature like Irritator (smaller body, little to no sail, long legs, tapered tail) to a creature like Suchomimus (much larger body, sail along the back, broader tail). I don't know if there are studies done on Suchomimus's or Ichthyovenator's lifestyles, but I wouldn't be surprised if they proved to be fairly aquatic hunters, perhaps preferring to wade on the shoreline and dive after larger prey. That also seems to track with the fish evolving around them - again, I don't know of any kind of study, but the fish of the Kem Kem Beds are _immense,_ and the only fit for apex predator of that ecosystem is Spinosaurus. While some of those fish would have likely come near the shore, many of them would have simply been too big to commonly live at the depths Spinosaurus could comfortably wade to. In fact, I posit that against the idea that secondarily aquatic large-bodied animals are typically marine - Spinosaurus lived in a very deep, ecologically rich river system, which formed a relatively constricted environment. Given that it seems to have no preference for moving out to sea, I posit that Spinosaurus's size and hyper-specialization are a sort of "island" gigantism, where the "island" is the river system it was limited to, as well as being the end result of an arms race with large-bodied freshwater fish.
4. Didn't I hear somewhere that isotope studies done on the bones show that they spent a good deal of time submerged? While I'm no expert on how isotopes work, if _all_ the bones show that, then surely that means it must have spent time with most of its body underwater. If, on the other hand, the lower leg bones show that, whereas the tips of the neural spines don't, it seems much more likely to have been a wader than a pursuit predator.
My theory was that it may have shifted as it aged. In its younger years, it was more aquatic in its hunting methods, and maybe shifted to heron-style hunting as it reached full size. It’s not perfect, but it does seem at least plausible.
The thing that leaps out at me is that underwater hunters tend to get streamlined fairly rapidly in the course of evolution because large surfaces create so much drag. This is true of fish, mammals and other reptiles, and other groups such as insects that have many aquatic lineages. The retention of a large sail in Spinosaurus as an underwater hunter makes the idea seem a bit silly.
I can vouch for Wonder models, I bought the Quetz and a Parasaurolophus from them and they were great. Great customer service. I did find the Quetz is a little unstable and tough to put together, but the Parasaurolophus was perfect and looks fantastic, so a big recommend from me.
For now, I generally lean towards the wader hypothesis. One theory about the sail I've heard that I thought was interesting was that it was to make Spinosaurus look even bigger; it did share its habitat with more macro-predatory dinosaurs such as Carcharodontosaurus, who could've considered it as a potential meal.
But whatever's going on with it...round and round, round and round the debate goes. When it's gonna stop, nobody knows....
I once heard that Spinosaur would most likely float in the water too. That got me thinking that it might act much like a duck or goose, but with actual teeth and claws. Later on, I even have a theory that Spinosaur might actually look like a Muscovy duck too.
It just seems to me like the tail would have needed unusually beefy to counter balance that long body, sail, and massive head. The rear legs would be bearing most of the weight so the front limbs didn't have to adapt much.
*sees the title* oh shit here we go again
why don't we just ask them?!?
oh... right...
I notice that some of these animals had sails and some didn't. Could it be that the species with sails inhabited cool waters and the sail, pumped full of blood and held above the water, was a means of maintaining warmth.
Or that it's just completely a display mechanism. Whatever the reason, the lack of it is other closely related animals means it could not have been essential for survival or locomotion. Like the argument of pterosaurs using thier head crests for steering.... the apparent extreme sexual dimorphism of this feature rules it out as being essential for flight.
I think it did a bit of both! Compare it to its reletives like Baryonix which are pure waders and spino obviously has more adaptations for swimming but still a lot of wading adaptations too.
I am in favour of the "heron" hypothosis. I also believe it had webbed feet and walked on two legs.
I believe Spniosaurus was primarially like a heron but it had started to slowly evolve towards a fully aquatic life style. Out of all in Spinosardea family it is the most aquatic like dinosaur found so far, so it would be interesting if a new species was found living later in Africa and was even more aquatic.
How i see it:
Juveniles were probably more deep water divers
And adults more herron/stork-like hunters
May have also been the opposite. Younger ones would be able to snap things up quicker, but would be limited to smaller fish. Standing in very shallow water, eating fish and water bugs.
Once they get older, they are heavier, and clumsier, and after their initial lunge, may fail to capture their prey, and have to swim after it.
It would not be dissimilar from what happened to mesosaurs (NOT mosasaurs), which similarly had fully aquatic young but more terrestrial adults.
After seeing Dave Hone's talk on Spinosaurus and reading his paper co-authored with Tom Holtz, I've been on Team Wader ever since.
You should watch "Clint's Reptiles": "We Shouldn't Talk About Spinosaurus (But We're Going To Do It Anyway!)".
or or or perhaps it’s a jack of all trades that is a bit more oriented towards river and lake ecosystems.
I'm Team Duck, aka surface swimmer. I don't think they were Team Gator (underwater swimmer) based on the evidence of some of those recent studies like they're computer models. But I don't think they were Team Heron (wader) either based on how short those hind legs are. Waders tend to have long hind legs so that they can step into deeper waters without having to swim, and yet Spinosaurus had proportionally short legs. It's not going to step into very deep of water to catch big fish, and we know they went after large fish. Therefore, I think they swam on the surface. Not quickly mind you. They would swim slowly along the surface -like a duck- and that big sail would act as bait. On the side facing away from the sun, it would produce a shadow to lure in prey, and on the side facing the sun, a bright display that too would lure prey. The fish would approach, and with their highly sensitive nose dipping in the water, Spinosaurus would lunge at the fish that would swim close enough towards them.
In the past 4 years since the 2020 reconstruction was first published, I can understand why other paleontologists disagree with the idea of Spinosaurus being an aquatic pursuit predator, but I diagree with the fact that the tail was only a display function. Animals today can use one bodypart for many different things, and I believe that the paddle tail was used for both display and swimming. And yet, hypothetically speaking, even if it wasn't used as a display feature in life, it already had a massive sail on its back, along with a bony crest on its head, so what other reason was there for Spinosaurines to evolve tall neural spines and chevrons for their tails?
This is just my personal hypothesis, but years ago I remember seeing a picture showing how the paddle tail would look if it was extremely flexible. And, considering that the neural spines prevent such flexibility, that should indicate that the tail was rather stiff in life, especially at the end of the tail. Considering this, and the strong leg muscles that were attached to the base of the tail, I believe that the tail of Spinosaurus was also used as propulsional support when swimming. The sheer stiffness of the tail would help create a powerful thrust when using its leg muscles to move the tail side to side. In other words, it would help Spinosaurus swim faster, diving or no diving debate notwithstanding.
I think the plushies will fly off the shelf.
Personally speaking, the only issue I have with the "sail as a display feature" theory is that, at least so far, display features on most dinosaurs tend to occur on or around their skulls, and on theropods particularly they're not very large, if they're even there at all.
And it's particularly odd that such a feature is not ancestral to Spinosaurids as a whole, since many of the species that, again, we know of so far don't even have them, whereas we have found intermediary forms for other families/suborders, like Stegosaurids and Ceratopsids, that already have them and further indicate that such features were not only widespread but occurred extremely early on in their evolution.
That being said, I do like the interoperation that it was used as both a display feature and a semiaquatic lifestyle, especially since in general the idea that display structures were used for multiple things seems to becoming more and more likely anyway.
All the species in this family have at least few adaptations for semiacuatic life or close to water life to hunt. Spinosaurus is the one with more adaptations to acuatic environment, so it's weird to have some scientist saying that it was not capable to dive, or it would be a bad swimmer? All in it's morphologic peculiarities looks designed for that purpose.
Way more elongated body than other spinosauroids. Hind legs dramatically reduced making it very slow and graceless on land, but making it more hidrodynamic. The tail and the sail does not make any sense on land, and you don't see those features in Baryonychinae which had common terophod proportions. Why and apex predator evolved that way?? Well, obviously evolution takes time, and Spinosaurus' tail was not as efficient as fully aquatic crocodilians for example, but that cannot be a reason for a new debate.
Was spinosaurus acuatic or at least semiacuatic? YES. Was a good swimmer? YES. And comparing to fully acuatic reptiles? NO. It seems like if they would have another 5-10 millions years to develop that body, they could have ended being fully acuatic. Idk but that's what common sense says to me. If it was not aquatic, Spino did all the changes wrong for a terrestrial life then... XD
I want to be witty, but evidence thus far seem evenly matched:
- On one hand the wader hypothesis has to content with the short limbs and large tail fluke
- On the other, the swimmer hypothesis has to content with the inland distribution of Spinosaurus
for all we know it could have swam and lightly dived and then gone to wade in the shallows during high tide to catch fish as they escape lower waters, I feel like trying to come up with an exact ritual for their predation tactics are going to forever be lost to the bias of what exists right now.
I’m really surprised that nobody has done a study comparing Spinosaurus to a duck. Just looking at such an animal that’s got short legs but is still bipedal, if you compare it to a duck it’s not all that different. Obviously this is just my own observation and not based on direct comparisons of center of gravity, etc - I’ll leave that to the people who know what they’re doing - but if I were to guess I’d say that it probably swam and dove like a duck does, only it would be going after fish instead of pond plants. I call this the Murder Duck Hypothesis.
a sail would be great at taking in heat while mostly submerged in cool water
I want to say team wading, but I'm in the middle of an art project, which later in part 3 will feature swimming Spinosaurus after a fight between a pair of Tarbosaurus & a Spinosaurus/Baryonyx hybrid which ends when a Dienosuchus killing the enraged murderous hybrid Spinosaur
Could it be that spinosaurus was designed this way, not for aquatic hunting, but rather for aquatic travel? What do fossils tell us about their range?
soon this thing will have a trunk and a pteranodon head crest if this keeps up.
on a more serious note we still don't truly know how its arms look like , and possibly its neck.