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Spinosaurus aegyptiacus v Tyrannosaurus rex
Topic Started: Jan 7 2012, 02:16 AM (459,139 Views)
Wolf Eagle
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Tyrannosaurus rex
Tyrannosaurus is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaur. The species Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin), commonly abbreviated to T. rex, is a fixture in popular culture. It lived throughout what is now western North America, with a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous Period, 67 to 65.5 million years ago.[1] It was among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to the large and powerful hindlimbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were small, though unusually powerful for their size, and bore two clawed digits. Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded Tyrannosaurus rex in size, it was the largest known tyrannosaurid and one of the largest known land predators. By far the largest carnivore in its environment, Tyrannosaurus rex may have been an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs and ceratopsians, although some experts have suggested it was primarily a scavenger. The debate over Tyrannosaurus as apex predator or scavenger is among the longest running in paleontology. Tyrannosaurus rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time; the largest complete specimen, FMNH PR2081 ("Sue"), measured 12.8 metres (42 ft) long, and was 4.0 metres (13.1 ft) tall at the hips. Mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from more than 7.2 metric tons (7.9 short tons), to less than 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons), with most modern estimates ranging between 5.4 and 6.8 metric tons (6.0 and 7.5 short tons). Packard et al. (2009) tested dinosaur mass estimation procedures on elephants and concluded that dinosaur estimations are flawed and produce over-estimations; thus, the weight of Tyrannosaurus could be much less than usually estimated. Other estimations have concluded that the largest known Tyrannosaurus specimens had a weight exceeding 9 tonnes.

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Spinosaurus aegyptiacus
Spinosaurus is a genus of theropod dinosaur which lived in what is now North Africa, from the lower Albian to lower Cenomanian stages of the Cretaceous period, about 112 to 97 million years ago. Spinosaurus may be the largest of all known carnivorous dinosaurs, even larger than Tyrannosaurus and Giganotosaurus. Estimates published in 2005 and 2007 suggest that it was 12.6 to 18 metres (41 to 59 ft) in length and 7 to 20.9 tonnes (7.7 to 23.0 short tons) in weight. The skull of Spinosaurus was long and narrow like that of a modern crocodilian. Spinosaurus is thought to have eaten fish; evidence suggests that it lived both on land and in water like a modern crocodilian. The distinctive spines of Spinosaurus, which were long extensions of the vertebrae, grew to at least 1.65 meters (5.4 ft) long and were likely to have had skin connecting them, forming a sail-like structure, although some authors have suggested that the spines were covered in fat and formed a hump. Multiple functions have been put forward for this structure, including thermoregulation and display. Dal Sasso et al. (2005) assumed that Spinosaurus and Suchomimus had the same body proportions in relation to their skull lengths, and thereby calculated that Spinosaurus was 16 to 18 meters (52 to 59 ft) in length and 7 to 9 tonnes (7.7 to 9.9 short tons) in weight. The Dal Sasso et al. estimates were criticized because the skull length estimate was uncertain, and (assuming that body mass increases as the cube of body length) scaling Suchomimus which was 11 meters (36 ft) long and 3.8 tonnes (4.2 short tons) in mass to the range of estimated lengths of Spinosaurus would produce an estimated body mass of 11.7 to 16.7 tonnes (12.9 to 18.4 short tons).

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Edited by Taipan, Apr 24 2015, 10:10 PM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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Looks like someone quickly changed his mind…
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Drift
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High Spined Lizard
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Hatzegopteryx
Jul 10 2014, 06:08 AM
"Slapping" behaviour in spinosaurids is just overrated generally...
Agreed, it's good this is being downplayed after years of heavy folklore.
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The Reptile
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blaze
Jul 11 2014, 07:17 AM
Shows like that use the magic of editing to make paleontologist say anything they want, but I don't remember any outrageous thing said by a paleontologist in that show.

edit:
I have transcribed everything said by a paleontologist in that episode up the 13th minute mark, it's pretty much the standard stuff, it was big, it was weird, it had spines and crocodile-like jaws with conical teeth and big arms and claws, it lived among other large predators and stuff. The only "wrong" thing is that they mention Sarcosuchus but there's no evidence that the paleontologist mentioning it was doing so answering the question "large meat-eatings things that lived alongside Spinosaurus".
Do they really do that? I'm not sure if you are just BSing or are really serious (it honestly would make sense if they did edit out more factual points to spit out bullshit, but I don't know for sure)

And about sarcosuchus- really it is downright possible that spinosaurus and it coexisted even if the bulk of the evidence seems to state that it would have instead lived alongside suchomimus (which was geographically older than spinosaurus). I really hate talking about time periods down to the exact number of MYA because it always seems to be inconstant (such as estimates of tyrannosaurus from 65 MYA to 70 or 75 MYA).

OK so maybe some of their theories about predation and ecology were wrong (if I reckon correctly, didn't they actually seem to indicate that spinosaurus was an adapted macrophage instead of a specialized piscivore like in Planet Dinosaur? If so, then that idea has long been discredited and is in itself beyond absurd!), but at least they discussed most of its physical (otherwise known as morphological) traits in an accurate fashion. Although I have heard some amazingly overexaggerated claims in that show- such as spinosaurus' teeth being "very nasty weapons of destruction" (undoubtedly they were very effective and deadly for what they were evolved to cope with, but THAT is an overstatement) and it utilizing torsion to kill (debunked- http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0065295). And it being able to tear apart a car... But the show did get a 5.8 on IMDB, so whether or not it was bashed because of its inaccuracies is irrelevant (because it really was very entertaining actually...)
Edited by The Reptile, Jul 13 2014, 03:21 AM.
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theropod
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Oh, he’s death-serious. The editors evidently did that exact thing on "clash of the dinosaurs, and that has been stated by the actual scientists involved. It’s a save bet to say they also did that on other terrible programmes.

And how can something be "goegraphically older" than something? And IMDB ratings are hardly relevant for scientific accuracy.
Edited by theropod, Jul 13 2014, 06:51 AM.
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TheMechaBaryonyx789
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Hatzegopteryx
Jul 10 2014, 06:08 AM
"Slapping" behaviour in spinosaurids is just overrated generally...
Grappling and tearing seems to be a more likely way of using its claws in combat:
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The claws could be effective at gripping a vulnerable part (eg. the neck) of a rival, and from there it could start tearing through the flesh and it could potentially cause serious damage. The curved morphology of the claw seems to promote this idea.
And no one has to point out this is mere speculation because I am aware of that.
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theropod
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Being curved doesn’t really tell anything about a claw, more or less all of them are more or less curved, and this seems to be a necessity to perform effective gripping actions with them. A recurved shape can be used for various purposes, whether it’s for tearing is determined by other factors.

Since spinosaur (and other basal tetanuran) claws show absolutely no unequivocal signs of being used in that way, but many of being used for puncturing and gripping, the latter seems an obvious purpose. So any damage they inflict will likely come from them being very strong and large stabbing devices, not from tearing.
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blaze
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@The Reptile
They do that but in Monsters Resurrected, as far as I know, they never did something to the level to what happened with Clash of the Dinosaurs, they mostly did the more "harmless" editing, they show the paleontologist saying something and then show an animation of a dinosaur performing an exaggerated version of what the paleontologist said, like one saying that Spinosaurus had big arms with big claws and then they show it killing Carcharodontosaurus with a single swipe, or one says that Paralititan has been found in similarly aged rocks and might have been prey to the large carnivores (plural) and then they show Spinosaurus killing one and so on.

I think you mean stratigraphically older, yes, Spinosaurus comes from younger rocks than Sarcosuchus, depending on their exact stratigraphy, the remains of Spinosaurus could be anything between 10 to 20 million years younger than those of Sarcosuchus. The age range of Tyrannosaurus is not really that much in contention, its either 68 or 67 to 66mya, 70mya or 75mya are incorrect, coming from the misunderstanding that Tyrannosaurus rex lived during the whole of the Maastrichtian age when it really only lived during the last half.
Edited by blaze, Jul 13 2014, 12:34 PM.
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Jinfengopteryx
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blaze
Jul 13 2014, 12:33 PM
@The Reptile
They do that but in Monsters Resurrected, as far as I know, they never did something to the level to what happened with Clash of the Dinosaurs, they mostly did the more "harmless" editing, they show the paleontologist saying something and then show an animation of a dinosaur performing an exaggerated version of what the paleontologist said, like one saying that Spinosaurus had big arms with big claws and then they show it killing Carcharodontosaurus with a single swipe, or one says that Paralititan has been found in similarly aged rocks and might have been prey to the large carnivores (plural) and then they show Spinosaurus killing one and so on.
This is probably one of the most standard media tricks that exists. It is like when media articles take sensationalistic titles, while careful reading of the text is enough to see that it is not completely true. In the case of documentaries, titles get replaced by animations. Both have the same effect, since they are for bringing the message in very brief form to those who are not interested in reading/listening to longer texts.
At least this is better than presenting cherry-picked quotes, like in COTD.
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The Reptile
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blaze, well the problem is that I have read plenty of accounts of a 70-75 MY estimate, while others say that tyrannosaurus was among the last of the dinosaurian macropredators (I firmly support this). Inaccurate or not, they are still there and are sparking much confusion. The same thing can be said about size estimates

But I can definitely say that I agree with Hatzegopteryx completely about spinosaurid "slapping" behavior. Many seem to imply that spinosaurus would have been able to kill effectively with its arms, which is probably not the case at all
Edited by The Reptile, Jul 14 2014, 03:37 AM.
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theropod
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Mind posting any of those accounts?
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The Reptile
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If I remembered exactly where I found them. The point being though is that these estimates of exact MYA always seems to change, as does size a lot. A lot of those dinosaur websites that post BS for kids tend to just go with what one source says, and thus it causes confusion
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theropod
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T. rex occurrs in the Hell Creek Formation.
The Hell Creek Formation includes the C/P boundary, which has been dated as 65.5-66.0ma old→ and is relatively short, <2ma→ in duration, so T. rex must have existed somewhere within the rather short time interval that gives us, i.e. entirely outside the 75-70ma range and in the late Maastrichtian.

Thus I think we know fairly well which ones are the perpetuated myths from children’s sites, and which are the actual scientific data.

There’s a difference between ambiguous estimates in the scientific world and an ambiguity between scientific estimates on the one and popular cacography of the former on the other hand.

References:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X1100152X
http://books.google.at/books?id=cHvcIeh2f84C&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
Edited by theropod, Jul 18 2014, 02:01 AM.
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Drift
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blaze
Jul 13 2014, 12:33 PM
@The Reptile
They do that but in Monsters Resurrected, as far as I know, they never did something to the level to what happened with Clash of the Dinosaurs, they mostly did the more "harmless" editing, they show the paleontologist saying something and then show an animation of a dinosaur performing an exaggerated version of what the paleontologist said, like one saying that Spinosaurus had big arms with big claws and then they show it killing Carcharodontosaurus with a single swipe, or one says that Paralititan has been found in similarly aged rocks and might have been prey to the large carnivores (plural) and then they show Spinosaurus killing one and so on.

I think you mean stratigraphically older, yes, Spinosaurus comes from younger rocks than Sarcosuchus, depending on their exact stratigraphy, the remains of Spinosaurus could be anything between 10 to 20 million years younger than those of Sarcosuchus. The age range of Tyrannosaurus is not really that much in contention, its either 68 or 67 to 66mya, 70mya or 75mya are incorrect, coming from the misunderstanding that Tyrannosaurus rex lived during the whole of the Maastrichtian age when it really only lived during the last half.
It's sad that these sad shams of documentaries are taken to heart by the misinformed and then presented as facts by one side of this debate...
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theropod
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Well, the other side of this debate takes trailers for video games as facts, that isn’t better either…
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7574
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Me go with spino powerful arm big claws can give truly injury to rex
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