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We are all familiar with Tyrannosaurus Rex, a massive theropod dinosaur from the Cretaceous period and star of several movies about dinosaurs that eat people. However, there were even bigger and potentially more terrifying beasts on Earth millions of years ago. Spinosaurus was even larger than the T-rex, and new discoveries indicate that it would not have been safe even in water. It turns out that Spinosaurus was an excellent swimmer thanks to its large paddle-shaped tail.
Spinosaurus was a theropod like Tyrannosaurus, that just means it had hollow bones and three-fingered limbs. Theropod descendants probably became modern birds, but Spinosaurus was more dangerous than any bird. Adults can weigh up to 7.5 tons and grow to more than 50 feet in length, making them one of the largest theropod dinosaurs.
The researchers first proposed that Spinosaurus was primarily an underwater predator several years ago, but the scientific community was not convinced. Donald Henderson, a paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Canada, noted that the Spinosaurus was probably very heavy with its distinctive tail sail and would not have been able to dive underwater. Nazir Ibrahim, the study’s lead author, believed the answer would be found in the fossils. Previous excavations had only discovered a few sections of the Spinosaurus’ tail, but the team discovered an almost complete set of tail bones at a fossil site in Morocco between 2017 and 2018.
The newly rebuilt Spinosaurus was undoubtedly at home in the water. Instead of having a conical whip-shaped tail, Spinosaurus had a giant flap attached to its rear. Some of the fossil bones were 12 inches thick, indicating that the tail would have been a powerful mode of underwater propulsion. The team speculates that Spinosaurus may have spent most of its time in the water.
The team created a computer model to assess the capabilities of the Spinosaurus’ tail, comparing it to modern dinosaurs living on earth and semi-aquatic creatures like crocodiles. As expected, Spinosaurus’s tail fin was approximately 2.6 times more efficient in water than the tails of other theropods.
Museums around the world will have to update their Spinosaurus models following this discovery, but that’s nothing new. The fossil record is incomplete, and sometimes we are wrong to try to reconstruct an entire animal from partial remains. The Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton at the American Museum of Natural History in New York remained in an incorrect upright posture until 1992 before taking the correct parallel position. Oh, Animal Crossing developers will also need to update their inaccurate Spinosaurus fossils.
Top image credit: Kumiko / Flickr / CC BY-SA 2.0
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