![]() Spinosaurus likely stood on its hind legs, with dense bones suited for walking upright. The giant Spinosaurus seemed lost in time. All that was left were Stromer's notes and drawings. He put the fossils on display in Munich's Paleontological Museum, but they were destroyed during Allied bombing in World War II. With its elongated jaws and large sail protruding from the spine, Stromer initially proposed Spinosaurus as a bipedal, fish-eating predator. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus has been an elusive creature since German paleontologist Ernst von Stromer discovered its skeleton in Egypt in 1915. The new paper, titled matter-of-factly, "Spinosaurus is not an aquatic dinosaur," was posted as a preprint at bioRxiv and published Nov. "This is simply not an animal that in your wildest dreams would be dynamic above water as a swimmer, much less underwater." "Do I think that this animal would have waded into water on a regular basis? Absolutely, but I don't think it was a good swimmer, nor capable of full submergence behavior," said Paul Sereno, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at UChicago and lead author of the new study who co-led the initial Spinosaurus discovery in 2014. Using updated virtual reconstructions of its skeleton and body mass based on its fossils, they analyzed its ability to propel its prodigious bulk underwater and found that while Spinosaurus was indeed the scourge of the shoreline with many adaptations for life at the edge of the water, it would fail as a fully aquatic, agile, underwater predator. These arguments are based on new fossils that suggest Spinosaurus had a fleshy, paddle-like tail for swimming and dense bones to help submerge it underwater.Ī new paper by paleontologists from the University of Chicago and colleagues elsewhere, however, rejects this "aquatic hypothesis" as far-fetched. More recent discoveries have pushed Spinosaurus further from the shore, with some researchers suggesting it was well-suited to pursuing prey out of the shallows and hunting deep underwater. LINK.At the time, Spinosaurus was described as a "semiaquatic" predator that prowled the shoreline of Cretaceous-era rivers, wading into the muddy banks to ambush fish with its massive, crocodilian jaws and interlocking teeth. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 64 (2): 239–260. Two new basal coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs from the Lower Cretaceous Sao Khua Formation of Thailand. Samathi, A., Chanthasit, P., and Sander, P.M. It is likely that the group formed a clade of top-tier predators that was endemic to the Asian continent back during the earlier parts of the Cretaceous period while North America and Europe were dominated by groups like tyrannosaurs.Įither way, the fossil record of SE Asia still holds lots of promise in unraveling the ongoing evolutionary mysteries of the dinosaurs! Road trip, anyone? Why are they importantįossils of their cousins are known almost only from Asia, with a couple of fragments known from South America and Australia. All of the fossils for both species are currently housed at the Sirindhorn Museum, Kalasin Province, under the Department of Mineral Resources, in Thailand. Its genus name, Vayuraptor, comes from Sanskrit ‘Vayu’, the God of Winds, and the Latin ‘raptor’, meaning thief – so meaning ‘raptor of the wind’. The first fossils of Vayuraptor were discovered by Paladej Srisuk in 1988. The name is in honor of Sudham Yaemniyom, former geologist of the Department of Mineral Resources, Bangkok, who found the first dinosaur bone of Thailand in 1976 at Phu Wiang Mountain. yaemniyomi were discovered by Preecha Sainongkham, a staff member of Phu Wiang Fossil Research Center and Dinosaur Museum in 1993. ![]() Now, two new species of megaraptoran have been identified from the Sao Khua formation, famous for its dinosaur fossils – five theropod species alone have been named from here! The new additions are called Phuwiangvenator yaemniyomi and Vayuraptor nongbualamphuensis. Map of Thailand (A) and close-up of northeastern Thailand (B) showing the location of Phu Wiang locality, Khon Kaen Province (square) and Phu Wat locality, Nong Bua Lamphu Province (star). Megaraptorans were a group of medium- to large-sized dinosaurs with long snouts and large, elongated claws on their hands, ideal for slashing and gashing their prey. Instead of your average-IQ’d Australian male ‘ gap yah’ backpacker, back in the age of dinosaurs there existed a group of ferocious carnivores called megaraptorans. If you go to an average Thai island today, you find a very different “predator” to what existed 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.
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