[ad_1]
The newly discovered tail fossil of the first “river monster” dinosaur shows that the giant predator was a powerful swimmer and the first known to have lived in water.
The six tons Spinosaurus aegyptiacus According to new research, they roamed the rivers that flowed through the Sahara desert 100 million years ago, living and trapping their prey in the water.
The tail study, which was unearthed in southern Morocco, was carried out by an international team, including from the universities of Portsmouth and Leicester, and with the support of a grant from the National Geographic Society.
The University of Portsmouth said: “Until now dinosaurs were believed to live exclusively on land, but the newly discovered tail of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, a giant predator, shows that it was actually well adapted to an aquatic lifestyle.
“The six-ton, 15-meter-long predator was, in fact, a powerful swimmer powered by a huge fin-shaped tail that hunted its prey in the vast river systems that flowed through the Sahara desert 100 million years ago. years.
“It is the first time that such an adaptation has been reported in a dinosaur.”
Dr. David Unwin, a paleobiology reader at the University of Leicester, said: “The Spinosaurus“The fin-shaped tail is a game-changing discovery for us that fundamentally alters our understanding of how this dinosaur lived and hunted – it was actually a” river monster. “
“In addition to its tail, many other characteristics of this dinosaur, such as the high position of the nostrils, heavy bones, short legs, and paddle-shaped legs, point to life in the water rather than on land.
“Dinosaurs not only dominated the land and took to the air like birds, they even went back to the water and became the main predators there.”
The Portsmouth spokeswoman said: “The team found that instead of a stiff, sharp tail, typical of other theropod dinosaurs such as the Tyrannosaurus Rex, the tail vertebrae of Spinosaurus they had extraordinarily long spines that supported a large, very flexible, fin-shaped tail, comparable in shape to that of a crested newt.
“After preparing all the fossils, the team used photogrammetry to digitally capture the tail anatomy.
Read more about dinosaurs:
“To quantitatively assess the performance of the tail, a team of Harvard researchers made a flexible model of the tail and attached it to a robotic system that mimics swimming movements.
“Then they compared the swimming performance of the Spinosaurus tail for modeling tails of other animals, including dinosaurs, crocodiles, and newts.
“The results are entirely consistent with the idea of a” river monster “truly propelled by the tail and dwelling in the water.”
Professor David Martill, a professor of paleobiology at Portsmouth, said: “However, one thing that still puzzles me is why just Spinosaurus became aquatic among dinosaurs. Why are there no aquatic iguanodons or stegosaurs?
Paleontologist Dr. Nizar Ibrahim of the University of Detroit Mercy and National Geographic Explorer said: “This discovery is the nail in the coffin for the idea that non-avian dinosaurs never invaded the aquatic kingdom.”
The research was published in the journal. Nature.
Reader Q&A: What was the first dinosaur?
Asked by: Adam King, Huddersfield
As paleontologists discover more fossils worldwide, we continue to find new dinosaurs from the Triassic period – the first interval in dinosaur history.
Currently, the oldest known dinosaurs come from Argentina, and are approximately 231 million years old. There are several dinosaurs of this age found together, including the horse-sized carnivore. Herrerasaurus, the meat eater the size of a dog Eodromaeus (a distant relative of Tyrant saurian Rex), and several dog-sized cousins to bears of giant long-necked sauropods, including Panphagia and Eoraptor.
The fact that so many dinosaurs, with different diets and sizes, lived at this time tells us that dinosaurs were already diversifying shortly after evolving from other reptiles. But none of these dinosaurs were giants, and none were at the top of the food chain. Those species would come later, during the Jurassic Period.
Read more:
