The Tail of Spinosaurus - A 2020 Revelation

Spinosaurus is a genus of dinosaur with a truly intriguing history of discovery first describes in 1915 by german paleontologist Ernst Stromer the massive neural spines of the organism named Spinosaurus Egypt ekeus made it surely one of the most remarkable paleontological discoveries of the early 20th century unfortunately these remains were not to last as being a place in a museum in Munich they were destroyed by the Allied for your airforce in a bombing raids leading up to this tragic event the remains of the Spinosaurus holotype among many others had been stalled in the museum for three decades but with the outbreak of the Second World War Stroman knew much of the specimens were vulnerable Stromer tried desperately to convince the museum director to move the priceless remains to safety knowing that swami nick has been safe thus far its safety would be short-lived however because he had criticized the Nazi regime the director refused to help and as an avid follower of the Third Reich refused to help with his efforts viewing stromer's thoughts as defeatist stromer's worst fears came on April 24th 1944 where in a bombing raid that damaged 50% of the city utterly annihilated to the museum housing the only known remains of Spinosaurus and many other organisms leaving streamers life's work in literal ashes in just a few decades of contact with humanity all of what had been discovered of this animals remains were annihilated all of what had been discovered of this animals remains were gone essentially becoming extinct a second time with only stromer's drawings and descriptions as well as two known photos remaining for decades Spinosaurus remained an enigma an unusual or inspiring animal lost to time and while not entirely forgotten was an animal now overshadowed by other large more complete theropods thankfully though this wasn't to last as near the end of the century in the 1990s new material was described notably revealing premaxilla and denturri fragments a ridged longitudinal fluted crest from the region between the eyes a snout including the premaxilla partial maxilla and partial nasals but still even with all these useful remain nothing cuz yet revealed a complete outline of this animal without us having to use inferences from close relatives resulting in Spinosaurus taking more of its anatomy from other Spinosaurus than itself to get a true glimpse of its appearance things changed in 2014 however when a paper published by NASA Ibrahim and colleagues described new remains from a sub-adult animal labelled as the neo type most notable for its short hind limbs which suggested to that Spinosaurus may have been a quadrupedal further revisions have revealed the claws to be more suited for catching prey than walking although anatomical limitations had already no validated to this posture beforehand as well as the center-of-mass been concentrated too near the hips while greatly increasing our knowledge of the animal and reaffirming their aquatic tendencies debates and further mystery followed while having many adaptations for swimming the lack of an effects of propulsion methods among other critiques led some paleontologists to assume that Spinosaurus would have been a better off hunting its aquatic prey from the shores of its habitats most similar to a grizzly bear or heaven therefore locomotion in the water was a major point of contention as no unambiguous evidence for a plausible mode of propulsion had yet been presented until very recently others also assumed that the remains may have come from different specimens meaning that the neo type was the Chimera or even a hoax and that the skeleton was too strange to be natural the validity of these claims are doubtful as histological bone analyses don't show differences between the various parts and there is no evidence to support the claims debate on this neo type would continue to carry on and seeking to put the controversy to rest dr. Ibrahim and his colleagues returned to the Moroccan Spinosaurus site to check for more remains in September of 2018 time was however of the essence as he had heard from local contacts that commercial fossil diggers were tunneling into nearby hills for bones due to this Ibrahim could not risk collecting the rest of what he believed to be the world's only known Spinosaurus skeleton to vanish into collectors curio cabinets which once there would be near impossible to refined all the new remains were found through documented excavations carried out by team of geologists and paleontologists Antikythera not to be accused of obtaining bones through scattered bones collected by amateur collectors the remains of the NIA type were questioned on their authenticity by critics over the original fossils since those remains reached paleontologists indirectly and two excavated by a local finder through this second excavation all doubts on the validity of the remains were therefore rendered obsolete and while the brutal excavation to begin with with their only jackhammer breaking within minutes and with several team members being hospitalized once they returned home the promise of discovery kept them going and they started to find tail vertebra after tail vertebra by the end of the dig season alone the dig team had uncovered more than 30 caudal vertebrae and pieces of the feet were collected and archived in a lab in Casablanca crucially some of the vertebrae neatly match up with illustrations of the more fragmentary spinosaurus tail vertebrae that Stromer published in 1934 bolstering the case that Spinosaurus lived across Cretaceous in North Africa from Morocco to Egypt in addition Ibrahim and his team didn't find any duplicate bones at the Moroccan sites a clear sign that that's the fossils belong to just one individual belonging to the already described 2014 neo type which is an extremely unusual occurrence in the chemcam beds and in turn unambiguously confirming the tale to belong to Spinosaurus when the fruits of all the labor by the team were laid out it took five tables to support the reconstructed tales for length and to the shock of the team the appendage resembled a giant boney paddle revealing that Spinosaurus was even more unusual than what we could have possibly imagined before this discovery the tale of Spinosaurus was unknown having instead to be reconstructed based off of relatives like Baryonyx or suka - having a rather typical theropods tail to help support the animals balance this newly described tail on the other hand it displays extraordinary adaptations to aquatic propulsion and from what has been displayed was clearly indicative for use in an aquatic environment as the paper suggests the vertebrae have incredibly tall neural spines as well extended Chevron's underneath the paper goes on to suggest that this tale would have been utilized to effectively propel the animal through the water in a similar way to live in crocodilians or nudes the bones of the tail itself are quite unique in that unlike other theropods they are not at all stiffened tinton array the group Spinosaurus belongs to possess different tails in which the degree of overlap in articulation between pre and post Saiga phases of the articular processes projections of the vertebra that are designed to fit within adjacent vertebrae increases along the caudal series greatly diminishing the range of motion between individual vertebrae and therefore maintaining of rigid tail critical and keeping the animals balanced by contrast in Spinosaurus the pre and post psycho faux phases are much further reduced than in other Teta neurons and in the middle and distal portions of the tail not only do not overlap but almost disappear this allows the caudal region considerable flexibility especially with regard to lateral movements meaning that this large flexible fin like tail was capable of extensive lateral exertion the tail is therefore most similar to that of a news or crocodilian as previously mentioned although there are some notable differences the spines on the fossa prey of these remains reveal quite an interesting tale as the transverse processes depending on the widths apart from one another corresponds to how much musculature the tail would have attached which in the case of Spinosaurus were especially wide at the base of the tail sticking out satiny a 90-degree angle which combined with the tall neural spines and the Chevron's on the underside would have made a robustly muscled base to the tail they remain like this until the eleventh or twelfth vertebra at which point the sideways transverse processes continue to get smaller until they disappear by the 18th the fair sabra after this point in the tail or the neural spines are no longer broad at the sides becoming incredibly thin with a bulbous point at the top of the vertebra the shrinking of the transverse processes means that the muscle blocks of the tail were also shrink with the middle of the tail being oval shapes and the end being a pill shaped in cross-section meaning that that's the more distal parts of the tail are weaker than the proximal parts meaning if that's the tail gets thinner as you move from the base to the end this is particularly interesting as crocodile universe prey a group of animals that Spinosaurus is often compared to based on ecology and similar anatomy are mostly compared to due to the hypothesized form of locomotion that is shared between the two that is moving the tail from side to side in a flexible manner the vertebrae of these animals are however quite different in that it has been noted that crocodilian and Spinosaurus caudal vertebrae are distinct crocodile tails have transverse processes that continue along the entire tail length allowing an ample amount of muscles to be attached to aid in the sideways undulation of the tail this means that crocodilian tails are powered equally along the entire length whereas the tail of Spinosaurus has the most strength near its base to gain a better understanding of how effective the tail would have been in aquatic locomotion Ibrahim and his team conducted a series of experiments utilizing a pliable plastic to reconstruct the tails of several different animals to compare their respective effectiveness and to find out where Spinosaurus lied when compared to other animals in swimming potential the tail of Spinosaurus was compared to Coelophysis Allosaurus a Nile crocodile and a crested newt as well as a rectangle with the model was being attached to a robotic controller and placed in a water flume fitted with sensors and Pistons to track the movements of the tails and the forces that they imparts as they move through the water the results from the experiment showed that the Spinosaurus tail was capable of generating more than eight times the thrust of the tails from the other theropods and at 2.6 times the efficiency while not as efficient as the crocodile and Newt tails the tail of Spinosaurus still had two positive benefits for aquatic propulsion relative to other theropods with the tail morphology also increasing the lateral stability of the body in the water producing the tendency to roll what while floating effectively disregarding a previous paper that suggested that their stability in water was questionable at best as is often with Spinosaurus there has been some debate this time directed to the tail and how useful it actually would have been a for aquatic propulsion the tale of Spinosaurus as previously mentioned is quite similar to crocodiles and as such has been scrutinized by some on how effective it would have been given its differences paleontologist Marc Whitten noted that as well as the vertebrae becoming more and more delicate as the tower advances posteriorly the reclined neural spines start to overhang which he suggests to have limited the flexibility of the structure the spines bent downwards and slightly down which means that's by the tip the vertebrae start to overhang in the ones after them and for a tale to be very flexible in the case of crocodilians they cannot have any bone in the way which is the case in the latter as all four spines point up at the same angle and are also tightly packed together quite different compared to Spinosaurus as the Spinosaurus tail is not as efficient compared to crocodilians some have suggested that Spinosaurus would have been more of an ambush predator than compared to crocodiles due to this and furred to limited flexibility although as I'll get into while they could have been more inclined to ambushing the spines of its tail were likely not the reason for this the statesman's by Marc Whitten on the inflexibility of the tail has since been relaxed as the statement doesn't take into account the musculature that would have been present in life deforming the neural spines and holding them in place to match the arc of the tail while swimming not to mention that the bone itself would have had the potential to bend as well the suggestion of the spines being too thin and fragile can also be reasoned with as there are animals that do possess similar Anatomy that's being a fish with active swimming fish like Marlin and possessing several different arrangements a vertebrae in their tails some of which have spines overlapping several vertebrae in some cases and yet still utilized their tails as the main form of propulsion with their fins acting as rudders this is supported by George Lauder a notable researcher of the biomechanics and evolutionary biology of fish as well as their hydrodynamics giving credence to what the paper has suggested so it seems as if Spinosaurus in terms of its tail was actually more fish-like than crocodilian at least from this comparison although due to differences in phylogeny body form and size there is still work to be done to see how well they can to these aquatic animals why Spinosaurus is semi-aquatic to the extent that it is is also a remarkable example of niche partitioning which would have been especially important in the case of Spinosaurus considering the ecosystem that where they existed the chemcam beds would have been dominated by several large carnivorous animals including the massive carcharodontosaurus and else'd Romeo's as well as large crocodile morphs and pterosaurs in what would have been one of the most dangerous areas in Earth's history no other terrestrial ecosystem today exhibits such a bias to large bodies carnivores and for so many huge carnivores to coexist in an area with a limited diversity of herbivores they can't have all been preying on the same organisms so to avoid the competition on the land and to take advantage of the abundant supplies of giant fish species the young sisters of Spinosaurus gradually took to the water and as a result would allow these dinosaurs to thrive amongst an ecosystem dominated by other giant carnivores as new discoveries are made the fragmentary and up until rather recently largely forgotten Spinosaurus has gradually been a pieced back together from a sail backs generic theropod to a massive crested terror and now an unusual theropods most comfortable in the water utilizing its large paddle-like tail to allow it to traverse its aquatic environment to take advantage of the plentiful fish species that's called North Africa home taking its Anatomy to lengths that we have as of yet never seen before in any other non-avian dinosaur Ibrahim and his team also seek to study how web - the feeds may have been including how far they could spread and therefore how well they could assist Spinosaurus in moving through the water the team it may also go back to the dig site to find - the arms of the animal which could then reveal even more about these remarkable animals and these future expeditions are certainly not out of the question whatever the case new discoveries and research will surely reveal more about the tale and other anatomy of these remarkable animals and this is definitely not the last time we have heard from the truly bizarre dinosaur that is Spinosaurus and with that I hope you enjoyed this video if you would like to see more be sure to subscribe if you haven't already and I'll see you next time whenever that's maybe [Music] [Music]

Channel: Henry the PaleoGuy

Views: 187,604

Rating: 4.9359951 out of 5

Keywords: Spinosaurus, Tail, 2020, National Geographic, Spinosaurid, Irritator, Fossil, Swimming, Aquatic, Kem Kem Group, Facts, Aegyptiacus, Skeleton, Ben G Thomas, TREY the Explainer, Spinosaurus Tail, Paleontology, Paleontologist, Nature, Discovery, Nizar Ibrahim, Charcharodontosaurus, Dinosaur, Onchopristis, Hunting, Spino, Bizarre, Spine, Vertebrae, Caudal, Climate, Habitat, Extinct, Weirder, Weird, News, Biology, Zoology, Cryptozoology, BBC, History, Anthropology, Mesozoic, Prehistory, Dinosaur Videos, Documentary, Anatomy, Bones

Id: gtNgdxt5Rl4

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Sat May 09 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/sfa83]

Very cool summary, thanks for the link. I’m starting to really dig (ha!) Spinosaurus for apparently being such a nice example of evolution at work and for all the mystery. And the weird looks of course.

I’m wondering, if they were mainly aquatic and their body large enough to sink into cooler depths (with their eyes and nostrils above the water, similar to what crocodiles do), could the large sail have stuck out of the water or at least in warmer waters to keep body temperature up? I’m sure I’ve heard about that hypothesis at some point but I’m not even sure if the aquatic nature of S. had already been clear at that point. Or whether it’s still a valid hypothesis or has been dismissed along the way?

[u/BornReady2121]

Nice