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Spinosaurus

Spinosaurus (meaning "spiny lizard"), was among the largest of all known carnivorous dinosaurs, possibly larger than Tyrannosaurus and Giganotosaurus. Its 7ft tall spiny sail means Spinosaurus was twice as tall as a human, at 50 feet long, it was 10 feet longer than T-Rex, it’s so big it was the size of a fire truck and weighing in up to 22 tons, this is the biggest predator to ever walk the earth. Very tall neural spines growing on the back vertebrae of Spinosaurus formed the basis of what is usually called the animal's "sail". The lengths of the neural spines reached over 10 times the diameters of the vertebral bodies from which they extended. The neural spines were slightly longer front to back at the base than higher up, and were unlike the thin rods seen in the Dimetrodon. Spinosaurus sails were unusual, although other dinosaurs, namely the ornithopod Ouranosaurus, which lived a few million years earlier in the same general region as Spinosaurus, and the South American sauropod Amargasaurus, might have developed similar structural adaptations of their vertebrae. The skull had a narrow snout filled. There were six or seven teeth on each side of the very front of the upper jaw, in the premaxilla, and another twelve in both maxillae behind them. It is unclear whether Spinosaurus was primarily a terrestrial predator or a piscivore (which means Spinosaurus was a fish eater), as indicated by its elongated jaws, conical teeth and raised nostrils. The hypothesis of spinosaurus as specialized fish eaters has been suggested before by A. J. Charig and A. C. Milner for Baryonyx. They base this on the anatomical similarity with crocodilians and the presence of digestive acid-etched fish scales in the rib cage of the type specimen. Spinosaurus appeared in the 2001 film Jurassic Park III, replacing Tyrannosaurus as the main antagonist. The film's consulting paleontologist John R. Horner was quoted as saying: "If we base the ferocious factor on the length of the animal, there was nothing that ever lived on this planet that could match Spinosaurus. Also my hypothesis is that T-Rex was actually a scavenger rather than a killer. Spinosaurus was really the predatory animal." In the film, Spinosaurus was portrayed as larger and more powerful than Tyrannosaurus: in a scene depicting a battle between the two resurrected predators, Spinosaurus emerges victorious by snapping the tyrannosaurus neck. In the fourth film Jurassic World, there is a nod to this fight where the T-Rex smashes through the skeleton of a Spinosaurus in the climactic fight near the end of the film.

Did You Know?

Spinosaurus replaced T-Rex in Jurassic Park 3.

 

Did You Know?

The skull of Spinosaurus resembles that of a Crocodile.

 

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