Animal Education 20 - Spinosaurus

Send us a text

Today is about Spinosaurus. For most creatures, I construct a post that flows well, not based on anything from the previous story. However, Spinosaurus is such a crazy story that I have to recount it simply. The original fossils were found in 1915. A massive predator with even larger spines. This makes up its famous sail, to the point it names means "Spine Lizard". It is such an old fossil it was believed at first to be quadrupedal like all dinosaurs back then. This is shown in the first picture with the blue specimen. Outside of that, it was nothing special. Eventually, science advanced, and then we got the bipedal version red and blue version seen here. This is all we knew; however, the fossils could teach us more. That was if the fossils were not destroyed during the bombings of Munich in WW2 in 1944. That's fun. We found pictures of the fossils, though, in 2000. That's when a weird thing happens: the original fossils held the famous long crocodile-like jaws. So why are the depictions of it till this point not long-jawed? Some of it could be that some of the original fossils were found to be another species. This is something I can't really figure out why, so maybe this is an excuse for you guys to do research. Anyway, this version would define it as a massive aquatic predator larger than Trex that would feature in Jurassic Park 3. This is featured in the green and tan model. However, in 2014, new fossils were found in Morocco. This made a quadrupedal version accurate again. Yeah, what a weird cycle. This also made it longer than Trex, but not larger. However, 2018 made it bipedal again, but still horizontal. This produced what is depicted in the 2020 Papo model, which is brown and black. However, in 2020, more fossils would reveal the strange, keeled tail. This is shown in the PNSO model, which is the most accurate figure made by far of this species ever. After all of this, we are done, right? It was the long, keeled-tail piscivore from Egypt, Morrocco, and maybe South America (A relative from there might actually be Spinosaurus). It's aquatic, too. This is supported by teeth found in a massive sawfish from 2010. In 2021 a study came out that said its body would support a shoreline lifestyle, but not an aquatic one. Oh yay. Then a 2022 study looked at the bone densities of all spinosaurs and found Spinosaurus could deep dive. Then, another 2022 study said it was unstable on land and lumbered in the deep water, so it lived in inland lakes and rivers instead of the usual coast depictions. If that last part was chaotic, that is because it was. Spinosaurus is a good example of how science changes, and what was right a few years ago can become wrong and then right again and then kind of wrong. Also, war is bad cause cool stuff and people get blown up.

Support the show

Thank you to our subscribers and our sponsor, JJP Designs!