Was Spinosaurus Really A Swimming Dinosaur?

Was Spinosaurus a swimming dinosaur? Or was it more of a wader, hunting from the shoreline? The Great Spinosaurus War rages on, so in this video we summarise some of the main arguments made in favour of both ideas!

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[carlboda]

Going by this my theory of Spinosaurus using its sail to charge up a mouth laser may prove to be the most accurate depiction of the animal so far

[aadithyanjr]

Whoever invents the time machine, their first task is to settle the spinosaurus debate once and for all

[urseliusurgel]

Polar bears, if you looked at their skeletons would appear to be essentially terrestrial, but they are documented as being capable of hunting underwater. Given the range of aquatic specialisations seen in spinosaur fossilised skeletal elements, it seems highly unlikely that they were incapable of subaquatic hunting. I suspect that they utilised a variety of hunting methods.

[fastrockproductions]

The running gag among palentology content creators to never want to discuss spinosaurus to avoid getting lots of angry comments is something that always humors and disappoints me

[macgonzo]

I think this whole thing would make for a great sitcom. Imagine, 4 paleontologists sharing a flat (apartment) and they constantly argue about spino, one uping each other in every episode.

[derekk]

Hear me out. Spinosaurus was an ant eater. Hated water. And the big sail on its back was for gliding. Yes it could fly. It would turn sideways in the wind. Might have had lasers on it’s head

[snowleopardSH]

Dr. Nizar can't catch a break, I got to interview him for my dissertation a couple of weeks ago, hes really nice but also very busy. My armchair take on Spinosaurus is that it was probably capable of hunting in both methods, it has a perfect build to sit down in flowing rivers and divert the flow of water to it's front half, any fish looking for food along the riverbanks would be pushed into it's kill zone and grabbed.

[DOGosaurus_rex]

Spinosaurus had a subterranean life style like a mole.

[dk-nt]

Spinosaurus is having a never-ending identity crisis

[lyricusthelame]

I have no qualifications, but personally I don't buy the 'tail was a display structure' hypothesis. Any time paleontologists can't explain why an animal has a feature they just say "idk, it was used for display or something", but such a tail has an extremely obvious practical use. I can see the spine on its back being used as a display structure, but the fact that no other theropod (to my knowledge) had a tail like spinosaurus is very suspect. If other indisputably terrestrial dinosaurs had a similar tail I may have believed it.

[laurachapple]

This video was obviously made purely to show off Ben's impressive spinosaurus collection.

[SpinedLizardLagoon]

For me, I'd like to think of Spinosaurus, given current studies, as an opportunist, and changed up its feeding strategies in occurence with the locale it was residing in at the moment, similarly to how brown bears do when moving from one place to another.

Given the adaptations it had for semi-aquatic locomotion, it was capable of diving to hunt for prey, but only if was in an environment where water was deep enough, and there was not more readily accessible prey around. If it found itself on more shallower streams, however, it would opt to being a wader to snatch up prey from the water's edge like a heron.

And with a recent study showing that it was also capable of bringing down terrestrial animals, if no aquatic prey was available or became scarce, it could switch to either grabbing up decently sized dinosaurs, or bully other predators off their kills with it's intimidating size and weaponry.

So that's my take on Spinosaurus: Depending on whatever situation the animals found themselves in at the time, they would change up tactics in order to survive, whether to dive, wade, hunt or scavenge.

[crissagram]

"Baby, wake up. New Spinosaurus Lore just dropped."

[ARGAtheropodfan]

I'm so happy Wonder Artistic Models is getting traction!

They make breathtaking wooden skeletal models (basically if you took the cheap wooden skeletons from magazines, but then on juice and if they had all the effort put in to make them actually anatomically correct) and are based on my homecountry Chile!

I have their Sue T. rex model and I absolutely love it. Can't wait to order more of their stuff!

[thelittleal]

I said it once before and I say it again, if it wasn’t a swimmer, it would still definitely have spend around very deep-shallow waters (2-4 meters) were it would still stand but still very submerged(far from the shoreline).
Since being a Giant predator, it would likely had hunted bigger pray like Sawfish, which do hang around in shallower waters, but still far from the shoreline.

being thin and streamline would also helped in walk through deeper waters and it’s paddle like tail May even helped it for tight turns.

But that’s just my hypothesis

[punwassibridgemohansinghla]

I like to imagine that all of the researchers are in on how roundabout this all is, but they all mutually agree to do it anyway as some kind of means of securing funds for their own projects

[mrapistevist]

Hippos are mentioned in other comments. They have very dense bones and cannot swim. They spend most of their time in water yet eat grass.

[kristinfrostlazerbeams]

For some reason, I think of a Grizzly Bear as a comparison to the Spino's hunting habits. Grizzlies are heavy, muscular animals who are absolutely fantastic at catching fish. They don't necessarily look like they would be great at watersports since they're bulky and muscular, but they are. They can swim well enough and dive to catch Salmon during the spawning season. They have bodies more adjusted to land travel, but in many areas they have adapted very well to catch most of their caloric intake in the form of fish. Maybe Spino did the same thing, thriving around river rapids but capable of hiking also.

[chheinrich]

I personally think the tail was just their so spinosaurus could swim around, not dive or hunt, better in its watery environment, pretty handy if you live in a big river system biom like the kemkem or modern day Amazon

[iainmc]

Let me simplify - No it isn't - Yes it is -No it isn't - Yes it is - No it isn't - Yes it is -isn't - is - isn't - is - you don't know anything - more than you !
Nice to see that even scientists come down to the YouTube level of debate we all enjoy ....