Support NeoGAF

[Cow Mengde]

Here's a video of Paul Sereno talking about this discovery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoeA6xaVdZo

I have the paper if anyone wants to read it.

 

[Nikodemos]

Just Spinosaurus? What about other Spinosaurs?

They were probably misreconstructed as well, based on the ur-typ. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus was the oldest find, so it's quite likely latter-date reconstructions were based on it.

Whether T. rex had feathers is questionable.

I thought paleontologists had pretty much accepted that most theropods were covered (to various degrees) in fur-like tubules that don't fossilize well. The more extreme examples (like maniraptors) had full feathers.

 

[happypup]

Cladistics GAF.

GAF is also not very knowledgeable when it comes to understanding evolution, and taxonomy.

You can blame the U.S. education system for most of that. public schools are still apprehensive about teaching evolution despite how integral it is in understanding biology. Also our language changes far too slowly. As has been discussed in this thread reptile is not a very good category. the term reptile covers turtles and tortoises (testsudina), lizards and snakes (lepidosauria), crocodiles and alligators (crocodilans), but not birds (aves) or mammals (mammalia), but crocodiles and birds are more closely related than crocodiles and turtles, If we redefine the terms and say diapsid = reptile then turtles may be excluded from the list (there is significant debate over the origin of turtle, as the earliest examples are all pretty advanced) and of course birds are included. It gets all confusing, but at a very young age we are taught that this word has this meaning that doesn't actually tell us anything about the organism. People don't realize how broad a category reptile is, it is the catch all for not a mammal, not a bird, not an amphibian, yet the differences between the reptiles is far broader than the differences within any one of those other groups.

I thought paleontologists had pretty much accepted that most theropods were covered (to various degrees) in fur-like tubules that don't fossilize well. The more extreme examples (like maniraptors) had full feathers.

Although they had the capacity to produce proto-feathers we also have skin imprints that are decidedly scaly, Just think about elephants, they have some hair, but are not covered in it. Just because we say that feathers evolved fairly early in the theropod lineage doesn't mean every organism within that group was covered in them (or even had them at all), Likely for T. rex the young had a downy coat and the adults did not have much (if any) feathers, however just like the elephant there are tyranids that were the mammoth to the T. rex's elephant.

 

[Valhelm]

Don't some biologists list birds as a type of dinosaur?

 

[happypup]

Don't some biologists list birds as a type of dinosaur?

birds are a dinosaur, it isn't even just some scientists anymore it is consensus. More specifically birds belong to a group of theropod dinosaurs called maniraptor.

 

[kswiston]

Don't some biologists list birds as a type of dinosaur?

If by some, you mean over 95%

 

[Cow Mengde]

You can blame the U.S. education system for most of that.

That's true. I only got a good understanding of cladistics because I'm into paleontology.

BTW, for anyone interested in more detailed look on how T.rex actually stacks up against Spinosaurus in size. Here are some pictures.

The white skull material is Spinosaurus and the black is Tyrannosaurus.

Spinosaurus's skull is barely wider than a man's head.

They would look something like this side by side.

 

[Pandaman]

The recently discovered a new dinosaur and they called it

Dreadnoughtsaurus or something stupid pop-culture like that. http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread1030789/pg1

My face when I heard the name was like:

No one has built a dreadnought in 80 years, how the hell is it a pop culture term.

 

[Mumei]

That's true. I only got a good understanding of cladistics because I'm into paleontology.

BTW, for anyone interested in more detailed look on how T.rex actually stacks up against Spinosaurus in size. Here are some pictures.

The white skull material is Spinosaurus and the black is Tyrannosaurus.

Spinosaurus's skull is barely wider than a man's head.

They would look something like this side by side.

In The Complete Dinosaur, there's an understated knock at Jurassic Park III:

32.5 "Rex Rules!" The wide temporal region and broad muzzle of Tyrannosaurus gives this animal and exceptionally strong skull. The long, low, slender snout of Suchomimus makes for a much weaker skull. The robust teeth of Tyrannosaurus are associated with a very deep, thick maxilla, and are indicative of a very powerful bite. The relatively small teeth of Suchomimus are rooted in a slender, thin maxilla, and it is highly unlikely that this animal was capable of biting with great force. The slender, weak skulls seen in spinosaurids such as Suchomimus contradict aspects of the plot in the film Jurassic Park III

 

[EmCeeGramr]

I dunno... I'm all for radical reconstructions, but something about that skeletal seems totally off. The hind limbs don't just look oddball, they look barely usable for an adult. And nasal openings in the skull don't always translate to the opening of the nostril.

Then again, Majungasaurus exists and it's a crime against all aesthetic beauty in nature so what do I know.

 

[Cow Mengde]

I dunno... I'm all for radical reconstructions, but something about that skeletal seems totally off. The hind limbs don't just look oddball, they look barely usable for an adult. And nasal openings in the skull don't always translate to the opening of the nostril.

Right, that was an issue with the sauropods, but from what we can see in the Spinosaurus skull, there are no visible grooves that suggests a longer chamber for the nostrils to connect to the naris. Who knows, you could be right.

The reconstruction does feel off. This is the first full reconstruction for Spinosaurus so there's still a lot to learn.

 

[Nikodemos]

Then again, Majungasaurus exists and it's a crime against all aesthetic beauty in nature so what do I know.

What, you mean the minuscule vestigial arms? Or the odd horn on its skull?

 

[Demoncarnotaur]

I dunno... I'm all for radical reconstructions, but something about that skeletal seems totally off. The hind limbs don't just look oddball, they look barely usable for an adult. And nasal openings in the skull don't always translate to the opening of the nostril.

Then again, Majungasaurus exists and it's a crime against all aesthetic beauty in nature so what do I know.

I agree that it does seem strange. I just can't shake that associated dachshund look from my mind.

What's wrong with Majungasaurus?

 

[cdyhybrid]

What I'm taking from this thread so far is that Spinosaurus was a giant crocodile with a sail and that a T. rex would fuck it up.

 

[MisterGrey3000]

A lot of you guys are right about how muddy the word "reptile" is...
I mean, there are way too many diverse clades within that classification that could easily be put into their own classes despite their common ancestry.
Just imagine for a second if gorgonopsids and
therocephalians were still around and we referred to them as mammals ("any creature with thick smooth non-scaly wrinkly skin, pores, erect legs, and hair of some kind") rather than therapsids or non-mammalian synapsids.
It's a great example of a word being way too inclusive/broad, and also a bit of a relic.

 

[Valhelm]

If by some, you mean over 95%

Well, I don't mean that they believe birds descended from dinosaurs (which I assume all biologists believe). I mean that some scientists believe that birds should be classified as dinosaurs just like how humans are classified as apes.

 

[Irminsul]

Well, I don't mean that they believe birds descended from dinosaurs (which I assume all biologists believe). I mean that some scientists believe that birds should be classified as dinosaurs just like how humans are classified as apes.

What you quoted is still true then. Even Wikipedia has birds in the dinosaur article.

 

[Amalthea]

You know what's funny? I was kinda a Spinosaurus fan long before JP3 so I had multiple toys of them. The more accurate they were the more often they would fall down headfirst into a quadruped pose and I often wondered if that would've been actually the case since their spine is so extremely long that pysics basically forces them into that stance.

 

[brian577]

Wasn't the Spinosaurus in the water in JP3? So wouldn't this be a case of JP3 being right?

 

[Amalthea]

Wasn't the Spinosaurus in the water in JP3? So wouldn't this be a case of JP3 being right?

It was suspected for a long time, just not that they were adapted that well for swimming.

I think it would ve been more realistic if they encounterrd the Rex first, then he would chase them around and they got to a river. The group hastily crosses the river and so tries the Rex, but suddenly something leaps out of the river and pulls the T-Rex under water. Blood flows to the surface and in the next moment the Spinosaurus surfces holding the Rex by his neck, introducing him to the protagonists and the audience.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Given the rarity of published post-cranial remains up until now, this new specimen is certainly of value, but as Scott Hartman notes, there's something fishy about the new Spinosaurus:

Going by the measurements in the supplemental information, it seems as if the published reconstruction has the pelvic girdle and hind limbs scaled too small relative to the dorsal vertebrae. When corrected, the proportions don't look nearly so bizarre, and much more like those of a typical theropod, making Spinosaurus an unlikely quadruped, (a dinosaurian dachshund it was not).

 

[Shaanyboi]

Fuck you, Spinosaurus. If Jurassic Park 3 were real, the T-Rex would have fucked you up and you know it. You only won for shock value. So fuck you. I don't give a fuck if you could swim or not.

you. i like you.

 

[BigDes]

I dunno... I'm all for radical reconstructions, but something about that skeletal seems totally off. The hind limbs don't just look oddball, they look barely usable for an adult. And nasal openings in the skull don't always translate to the opening of the nostril.

Then again, Majungasaurus exists and it's a crime against all aesthetic beauty in nature so what do I know.

Nuh huh

Majungasaurus is rad, by the time its prey stopped laughing at its stumpy little arms it was too late to run away.

 

[Amalthea]

Given the rarity of published post-cranial remains up until now, this new specimen is certainly of value, but as Scott Hartman notes, there's something fishy about the new Spinosaurus:



Going by the measurements in the supplemental information, it seems as if the published reconstruction has the pelvic girdle and hind limbs scaled too small relative to the dorsal vertebrae. When corrected, the proportions don't look nearly so bizarre, and much more like those of a typical theropod, making Spinosaurus an unlikely quadruped, (a dinosaurian dachshund it was not).

Yeah, those limbs actually look comically small and you have to wonder how they would have been able to rest their body on such forelimbs.
Sadly, as you might know, even with extremely well-known dinosaurs like Plateosaurus we have species that get their stance switched from quadruped to biped and back again every few years.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Sadly, as you might know, even with extremely well-known dinosaurs like Plateosaurus we have species that get their stance switched from quadruped to biped and back again every few years.

Not with Plateosaurus we shouldn't; Mallison has definitively shown, (Digital Plateosaurus I and Digital Plateosaurus II), that it was restricted to walking bipedally. The articulation and range of motion of the hands and forelimbs simply do not allow for anything else.

 

[Moosichu]

Well, I don't mean that they believe birds descended from dinosaurs (which I assume all biologists believe). I mean that some scientists believe that birds should be classified as dinosaurs just like how humans are classified as apes.

They understood what you meant. Still that high. Birds are dinosaurs. I love telling people there are dinosaurs walking amongst us today. Then I point at a pidgeon.

 

[Septimus Prime]

If you're torn between T. rex and Spinosaurus, allow me to present Acrocanthosaurus. It's the best of both worlds.

I thought paleontologists had pretty much accepted that most theropods were covered (to various degrees) in fur-like tubules that don't fossilize well. The more extreme examples (like maniraptors) had full feathers.

happypup already answered, but I think it's still inconclusive. If they did have feathers, the "feathers" may also not be like how we imagine feathers today.

 

[happypup]

Well, I don't mean that they believe birds descended from dinosaurs (which I assume all biologists believe). I mean that some scientists believe that birds should be classified as dinosaurs just like how humans are classified as apes.

I figured I would address this in a somewhat thorough manner. Way back when, Linnaeus created a taxonomic system based on shared similar features. While it had some aspects of a 'is a' relationship (as in a wolf is a mammal) it was primarily focused on a has a relationship (as in mammals have fur, canines have canine teeth etc.) the groupings were rigid, as scientists at the time largely believed that the species did not change significantly over time. Once we figured out evolution, once that theory had gone from being at the fringes of biological science to being the fundamental tenet of biology the 'has a' relationship groupings just didn't work. We realized that every species has a long list of 'is a's' preceding it.

Now much of the naming could remain the same, as more similar features tend to be shared as organisms are more closely related, but the way we looked at the groupings changed. Rather than having a bunch of different boxes where each box represents a broad group of organisms and inside those boxes are smaller boxes, we found that every box could neatly fit within another bigger box, a series of nested groups all leading back to a single big box that contains all life. So for birds (and I am skipping a few stages here) the smallest box that fits all birds is called Aves, that sits in a bigger box called maniraptor which sits in theropod, then saurischian, and dinosaur and so on.

The big push in classification is removing or redefining labels that stand for these boxes that don't fit neatly into a single bigger box, or that leave out one of the members of that bigger box. Now bird works just fine, it is a perfectly valid term as every member it is describing fits neatly into the bird box, but dinosaur would leave out one of the boxes if it didn't include birds, we call this type of term a paraphyly, and we want to get rid of them.

So, in short, when we say birds are dinosaurs, what we are saying is that dinosaur isn't a comprehensive definition of a group of organisms without the inclusion of birds.

 

[strafer]

That would explain why the Spino was underwater in Jurassic Park 3

 

[spekkeh]

So what would the dorsal 'fin' have looked like then? If Spinosaurus is aquatic, surely he doesn't need that extensive heat regulation? A fat hump after all? More muscles for tear strenght?

 

[Unknown One]

Fuck you, Spinosaurus. If Jurassic Park 3 were real, the T-Rex would have fucked you up and you know it. You only won for shock value. So fuck you. I don't give a fuck if you could swim or not.

I still can't comprehend how the big T Rex jaws didn't kill that shit and it's thin ass jaws killed the T Rex. Insult to injury

 

[thecouncil]

That would explain why the Spino was underwater in Jurassic Park 3

Jurassic Park: Always scientifically accurate and even ahead of its time. UNTIL NO FEATHERS!

 

[Shogmaster]

100% this, and on that note, I am still not entirely convinced they are the same species.

Listen to Jack.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQa11RMCeSI

 

[Anton Sugar]

The white skull material is Spinosaurus and the black is Tyrannosaurus.

LOL. JP3 is even more of a travesty. I wonder if it was Joe or some executive's idea to "dethrone" the T-Rex.

 

[spekkeh]

Jurassic Park: Always scientifically accurate and even ahead of its time. UNTIL NO FEATHERS!

I think we will find out dinosaurs didn't in fact have feathers because Jurassic Park is always right.

 

[baterism]

CAPCOM YOU MOTHER!
Look at all these new finding about villain looking dinosaurs! Where is goddamned Dino Crisis Reboot?

 

[Cow Mengde]

Not with Plateosaurus we shouldn't; Mallison has definitively shown, (Digital Plateosaurus I and Digital Plateosaurus II), that it was restricted to walking bipedally. The articulation and range of motion of the hands and forelimbs simply do not allow for anything else.

BTW, this is why we shouldn't jump to conclusion that Spinosaurus was definitely a quadrupedal animal. The evidence is still very limited. This is our first time getting a real view of Spinosaurus. A lot of what's published today could easily change within a few years. A lot of things on Spinosaurus just doesn't make sense right now. Whether it's the size and length, to the way it's caudal vertebrae's arranged, to it's limbs are still very muddy.

Going by the measurements in the supplemental information, it seems as if the published reconstruction has the pelvic girdle and hind limbs scaled too small relative to the dorsal vertebrae. When corrected, the proportions don't look nearly so bizarre, and much more like those of a typical theropod, making Spinosaurus an unlikely quadruped, (a dinosaurian dachshund it was not).

The limbs are still pretty gracile for the the length of the body. The center of gravity still looks off. The body might actually be longer than what we know right now.

 

[Reaganomics]

In a few years time, we'll find the feathers all over that fucker.


I'm kind of terrified of something that could eat sharks, since sharks are kind of scary bad-asses of the ocean. Unless you're the kawaii nurse shark.

 

[DopeToast]

As if Jurassic Park III could get any stupider.

 

[y2dvd]

In a few years time, we'll find the feathers all over that fucker.


I'm kind of terrified of something that could eat sharks, since sharks are kind of scary bad-asses of the ocean. Unless you're the kawaii nurse shark.

But orcas owns sharks today. Orcas are the true king of the sea.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

The limbs are still pretty gracile for the the length of the body. The center of gravity still looks off. The body might actually be longer than what we know right now.

I don't think Hartman shifted the location of the center of mass from that of the original reconstruction. Quoting from his blog post:

I've "corrected" the size of the pelvis and hind limb so that they match their published size relative to the dorsal vertebrae, and it makes a pretty big difference. Not only do the hindlimbs look more in line with other theropods, but the deeper pelvis would also impact the center of gravity calculations (by shifting them back). I haven't had a chance to look at the scaling of the cervical or caudal series in depth, but assuming that Table S2 is correct then the appendicular skeletal proportions published in the paper cannot be right. At the very it least it calls into question the idea that Spinosaurus was an obligate quadruped on land.

Shifting the CoM back towards the hips would put it closer to the same general area as that suggested for other theropods, even if the scaling of the axial vertebrae remains unchanged. You're right, though, that that might not be the case, if there are similar scaling errors as with the pelvis and limbs.

 

[Reaganomics]

But orcas owns sharks today. Orcas are the true king of the sea.

It's a good thing there aren't megalodons anymore. Next step up is megalodon orca then I dunno, probably a dolphin that can shoot comets.

 

[Demoncarnotaur]

Given the rarity of published post-cranial remains up until now, this new specimen is certainly of value, but as Scott Hartman notes, there's something fishy about the new Spinosaurus:



Going by the measurements in the supplemental information, it seems as if the published reconstruction has the pelvic girdle and hind limbs scaled too small relative to the dorsal vertebrae. When corrected, the proportions don't look nearly so bizarre, and much more like those of a typical theropod, making Spinosaurus an unlikely quadruped, (a dinosaurian dachshund it was not).

Any more on this? It would be a huge error on their part, especially since they have a new skeleton on display with those proportions.

 

[sub_o]

So, it's a sail boat?

 

[Mistel]

The most fascinating part of this is that the study suggests the Spinosaur was a quadruped on land, and not bipedal as originally thought. The new reconstruction makes the Dinosaur all the more bizarre:

That's very interesting, I wonder if the same is applicable to other spindosaurids?

 

[zeemumu]

 

[NYCmetsfan]

birds are a dinosaur, it isn't even just some scientists anymore it is consensus. More specifically birds belong to a group of theropod dinosaurs called maniraptor.

I love that this thing is a dinosaur

 

[Nikodemos]

So, it's a sail boat?

Possibly heat regulation.

I love that this thing is a dinosaur

This one as well:

 

[Cow Mengde]

Given the rarity of published post-cranial remains up until now, this new specimen is certainly of value, but as Scott Hartman notes, there's something fishy about the new Spinosaurus:



Going by the measurements in the supplemental information, it seems as if the published reconstruction has the pelvic girdle and hind limbs scaled too small relative to the dorsal vertebrae. When corrected, the proportions don't look nearly so bizarre, and much more like those of a typical theropod, making Spinosaurus an unlikely quadruped, (a dinosaurian dachshund it was not).

Andrea Cau is saying otherwise though. I think he has access to early information about Spinosaurus, since he's been hinting about the shortness of Spinosaurus since 2013.

 

[Oblivion]

Wait a minute, this thing actually existed at one point? I thought it was a stupid concoction by the guys who wrote JPIII.