Research conducted by UChicago paleontologists and their partners reveals significant flaws in previous theories suggesting that the sail-backed giant predator Spinosaurus actively hunted its prey underwater.
For years, controversy has swirled around how a read more about the history of Spinosaurus and its initial discovery). Later in 2020, an international group of researchers countered that description with a study in Nature, using its newly discovered, tall-spined tail bones to suggest that it propelled itself like an eel to hunt underwater.
A 2022 Nature study by many of those same authors confirmed their 2020 assessment showing that Spinosaurus had dense bones to use as ballast in diving like a penguin. They also argued that some other spinosaurids, such as its older African cousin Suchomimus, had less dense bones and were likely waders.
About the same time in 2022, a group of paleontologists at UChicago teamed up with colleagues elsewhere to test these ideas by creating digital skeletons and flesh models of the Spinosaurus and Suchomimus. Their results, published in eLife, found that both Original article here. .