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Post by theropod on Jan 22, 2014 19:45:35 GMT 5
trout-sized?!?!
How should it catch fish that small? You realise this is an animal with a skull lenght in excess of 1.5m, and a total lenght in excess of 14 (more likely 15)?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 22, 2014 20:06:30 GMT 5
Indeed. If that's the case, arm lenght would be roughly two and a half metres. And that's very impressive considering that the Deinocheirus holotype had arms ~2.4 meters long. trout-sized?!?! How should it catch fish that small? You realise this is an animal with a skull lenght in excess of 1.5m, and a total lenght in excess of 14 (more likely 15)? The fish would elude it, and if it caught it, it would be like running a kilometer without rest just to get a spoonful of food. Basically the same reason why I don't think Tyrannosaurus is as dangerous to a human as the public thinks it is. |
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Post by Godzillasaurus on Jan 22, 2014 20:34:35 GMT 5
Trout sized fish?! Really?
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Post by Infinity Blade on Jan 22, 2014 21:41:02 GMT 5
Yeah, those fish were at least the size of rhinos.
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Post by dinokid202 on Jan 23, 2014 4:53:47 GMT 5
Spinosaurus is actually the largest of theropod dinosaurs. The second is either carcharodontosaurus, giganotosaurus, t.rex or mapusaurus. But anyways spinosaurus should be the favorite over any other theropod due to its sheer size and strength. walking with dinosaurs actually said that giganotosaurus was the largest predatory dinosaur spinosaurus was clearly not very strong because it had very thin and weak jaws. and its small conical teeth were not designed for killing. it was like a gharial while carchy is like the saltwater crocodile and t rex is like the american alligator |
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Post by Godzillasaurus on Jan 23, 2014 5:02:28 GMT 5
Look over my past posts, please. Try searching in the "Carcharodontosaurus vs Sarcosuchus", "Tyrannosaurus vs Spinosaurus", and "Spinosaurus Bite Force" threads for why spinosaurus was actually anything but weak and was certainly not a "trout-eater". Oh yea, and you should also look back at Page 6 of this thread for more information on the subject. Happy hunting!
And no, spinosaurus was not like a gharial and carcharodontosaurus was not like the saltwater crocodile. I can see why you think of the American alligator as a decent analogy for tyrannosaurus due to their crushing morphologies, but they were still very different from one-another.
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Carcharodon
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Post by Carcharodon on Jan 23, 2014 5:42:52 GMT 5
Spinosaurus is actually the largest of theropod dinosaurs. The second is either carcharodontosaurus, giganotosaurus, t.rex or mapusaurus. But anyways spinosaurus should be the favorite over any other theropod due to its sheer size and strength. walking with dinosaurs actually said that giganotosaurus was the largest predatory dinosaur spinosaurus was clearly not very strong because it had very thin and weak jaws. and its small conical teeth were not designed for killing. it was like a gharial while carchy is like the saltwater crocodile and t rex is like the american alligator And? That is not a reliable source. And WWD is rather old. It does not have "thin and weak jaws". It preyed on fish that were rhinoceros-sized or larger, and most were covered in extremely tough scales, it would need quite a bite force to handle some of these fish. And who is to say its "small conical teeth" were not designed for killing? Also a gharial is a terrible analogy for spinosaurus. Also a saltwater croc is a really bad analogy for carcharodontosaurus. If anything a shark or komodo dragon would be more of an analogue. |
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Post by theropod on Jan 23, 2014 17:02:50 GMT 5
Spinosaurus is actually the largest of theropod dinosaurs. The second is either carcharodontosaurus, giganotosaurus, t.rex or mapusaurus. But anyways spinosaurus should be the favorite over any other theropod due to its sheer size and strength. walking with dinosaurs actually said that giganotosaurus was the largest predatory dinosaur spinosaurus was clearly not very strong because it had very thin and weak jaws. and its small conical teeth were not designed for killing. it was like a gharial while carchy is like the saltwater crocodile and t rex is like the american alligator Ok, I realise you are probably a kid and that you´ll learn, so please read carefully: Documentaries, such as walking with dinosaurs, are not reliable sources and are not acceptable evidence here. Please stop using them as such, because they do not prove anything. Walking with dinosaurs did not feature a Spinosaurus, and the larger Spinosaurus remains (the snout described in 2005) were not even known back then, so its not surprising they claimed Giganotosaurus (which was indeed, back then, described as such in scientific papers) to be the largest theropod. Spinosaurus did not have "small" teeth. Its teeth are similar in size to those of long-toothed extant crocodilians (ie. longer than those of alligators or gharials), and would have been highly effective at deep penetration. Of course it had conical teeth, because that´s the tooth shape that´s best for gripping. Those jaws may have been thin, but that does not equal being weak. In any case they were strong enough for it to kill very large fish and probably mid-sized dinosaurs, and they probably delivered a bite force of several tons, so they cannot be THAT weak. The jaws alone do not determine how weak or strong an animal is. Spinosaurus had a pair of truly huge arms, each probably as voluminous as its skull, and it has a giant, bulky body with a fairly gigantic dorsal ridge. Given its size, it must have been very strong. Carcharodontosaurus is by no means comparable to a saltwater crocodile. It is rather a giant, two-legged komodo dragon. T. rex also cannot be compared to an alligator which relies heavily on torsional force and dorwning to kill its prey, while Tyrannosaurids typically had large, bone-shearing teeth for puncturing and crushing. |
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Post by creature386 on Jan 23, 2014 20:53:12 GMT 5
Because I don't want the threads here to become like the ones on carnivora (where threads got many extra pages because people like dinosaurs always got lots of replies), I would like if such people don't get more replies than they need (one or two per comment should be enough in most cases, but it of course heavily depends on the content of the replies). However, I don't complain about what happened here because theropod's reply was very good and explained all the common misconceptions. |
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Post by spinodontosaurus on Jan 23, 2014 20:53:28 GMT 5
I will also point out that one of the teeth in the largest known Spinosaurus skull (a snout referred to by it's specimen number, MSNM V4047, image posted below) has the widest crown of any known theropod tooth (the crown essentially being the bit that sticks out from the skull); that is no small tooth!  ^Original fossil  ^Restored version (the snout labelled as 'b' is the one in question; 'a' is another, smaller Spinosaurus, c/d is Angaturama/Irritator, 'e' is Suchomimus and 'f' is Baryonyx, with the scale bar represented 20cm). Whilst Spinosaurus definitely had a pretty narrow jaw (about 20cm wide at the middle, compared to just over 30cm in Carcharodontosaurus and Giganotosaurus, and nearly 50cm in the largest Tyrannosaurus), it is not that of a gharial, and certainly wasn't weak. In terms of width it's snout is closest to the False Gharial ( Tomistoma), but accounting for the fact Spinosaurus has a deeper snout you could probably compare it to the slender-snouted crocodile ( Mecistops) and the freshwater crocodile ( Crocodylus johnsoni), none of which are limited solely to fish prey (although it is a main target), in fact Tomistoma has been known to kill things as large as deer and humans. Also: www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUQjslyarGI^That is how tough fish scales can be, and the fish that swam in the waters around Spinosaurus included an 8 meter sawfish named Onchopristis, and a coelacanth named Mawsonia that could reach sizes rivalling that of a Great White Shark in some species ( Mawsonia gigas). |
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Post by theropod on Jan 23, 2014 23:12:01 GMT 5
Thanks creature, IÂ’ll keep that in mind. spinodontosaurus: ThatÂ’s an interesting observation! And it seems to correlate very well indeed with its inferrable diet of really big fish. |
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Post by Godzillasaurus on Jan 24, 2014 9:31:16 GMT 5
Minor nitpick, but spinosaurus likely did not have a very exceptionally powerful bite force. This instead seems to rather be attributed to its impressive size.
What makes its jaws strong for the most part is instead their ability to effectively clamp down on a large fish without injury/fracturing, as they simply lacked the same crushing morphology as seen in tyrannosaurus and related genera and were instead far better designed for gripping than killing or crushing. I'm sure you probably already know this, but I thought I would just point this out simply because its bite force was most likely not exceptional, and its morphology is instead in correspondence with its diet of large fish where sheer crushing is not necessary.
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Post by theropod on Jan 24, 2014 22:15:58 GMT 5
Yes, this bite force of several tons is attributed to its size (to be exact, the size of its skull). That does not mean it must have been built for crushing, which is not universal to animals with strong jaws.
Carcharodon carcharias produces a very impressive bite force, although it clearly has extremely sharp, labiolingually compressed slicing teeth, simply by virtue of its great size and the great size of its jaws. Many crocodilians produce even greater bite forces, and they, too, are built for gripping prey animals, not that much for crushing them (which of course they do on smaller ones nevertheless).
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Post by Godzillasaurus on Jan 25, 2014 2:02:15 GMT 5
Of course its bite force would be relatively high in mature animals. But of course what mainly makes its jaws strong is their morphology which indicates high capacity for gripping without injury. Dinokid's claims that spinosaurus only ate small "trout-sized" fish seems to be attributed to his belief that spinosaurus had weak jaws because they were narrow by comparison to animals like carcharodontosaurus in which case spinosaurus had the disadvantage.
Bite force is really irrelevant, as its diet and ecology did not require a very powerful initial bite. Of course it would need to be able to firmly grip a large fish, but most of what makes its snout strong in this regard is its obvious piscivorous adaptations such as a lack of exceptional proportions (relatively slender) and yet the possession of a generally dense rostral build (not very pneumatic as we see in allosaurs and instead merited a particularly more robust snout overall), both of which seem to merit gripping resistance purposes both vertically and laterally.
What I am saying is that, regardless of if it had a powerful bite or not, it was designed for gripping; and bite force in general does not seem particularly relevant unless an animal was designed for crushing. What is the exact bite force of the great white shark? This has perplexed me for some time now; many sources claim that its bite force was rather weak while others claim that it was a very powerful biter ( of course, we still have megalodon which apparently was characterized by a bite force rivaling that of tyrannosaurids, large crocodylomorphs, and even the largest pliosaurs even though it seemed far less adapted for crushing than the listed groups). I honestly do not know what to say about carcharodon having a very powerful bite, especially if its primary killing style was around shaking to tear animals (such as seals) apart. Just as with modern crocodilians, bite force is not the dependent factor of jaw and snout anatomy in many groups of animals and instead reliant on size (a similarly-sized American alligator and Indian gharial would actually have comparable bite forces even though the latter was clearly not designed for using it in crushing). I am not an expert on sharks, but I can tell you that the primary killing style of the great white was mainly revolved around lateral ripping to dismember prey animals easily, in which case I wouldn't wager bite force to be very relevant
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Post by theropod on Jan 25, 2014 2:34:23 GMT 5
The estimated value for a 3.3t specimen in Wroe et al. was 1.8t. This is among the strongest bite forces in the extant world (tough vastly exceeded by the largest crocodiles, and presumably also by Orcinus orca, for which there are no data so far). Needless to say thatÂ’s a very heavy specimen, which is the point, it achieves such an impressive bite force by virtue of its size (the same of course applies to C. megalodon).
Allosaurs seem to have had comparable bite force for their body mass (isometry would indicate 3.2t for an 8t animal, which is very close to what you get from scaling to the skull lenght of Carcharodontosaurus from Allosaurus "jimmadseni").
Not very strong for animals of such size, but nevertheless very high absolute forces (and of course, thatÂ’s but a part of the forces acting in an actual bite, were pulling, neck ventroflexion etc. will be applied, which means that the total amount of force will get much greater still).
The point was that regardless of whether it was particularly robust, SpinosaurusÂ’s skull was not weak, though clearly less robust than in macrophagous theropods, especially the ones with crushing adaptions.
But whether one thinks this is just because it was good at gripping, or who-knows-what, fact is, it preyed on giant(-gws)-sized fish, which means it could not be all that fragile-snouted. You know the morphological comparisons that are in agreement with this. It must have been capable of somehow catching and killing a multi-ton coelacanth or sawfish. That alone means it was capable of somehow utilising its jaws in killing.
Whether they had to and could endure extreme stresses or not is irrelevant, and I already pointed out how those would not have to be so great.
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