Genuine question - how do paleontologists decide that this claw fragment they found is from the same animal as this other vertebra they found? Even if they found it in the exact same age sediment and in the same location, what's stopping it from being two completely seperate animals?
If it's found in the same location, right next to the fossil, in the same layer and roughly where the hand should be it makes sense. Other than that if it's in the same era, and belongs to the same formation etc. finding things that the species is known for etc too. Many ways off the top of my head.
For example, if you find a finger belonging to a large spinosaurid, from the same formation, ecosystem, and era as spinosaurus it's assumed to be spinosaurus
I see, thanks for the explanation. The point about it being where you expect that part to be was a good one that I hadn't thought of. Even so, there are situations where multiple animals die in one big pile-up (eg: Velociraptor/Protoceratops) so I imagine this isn't completely foolproof.
Yeah, in Paleontology nothing is really 100%. Even the lips, it's still a theory and not 100% concrete, with evidence here and there against it. Predator traps and mass death due to flood etc are great as they preserve many specimens.
Here's a fun one, code name leviathan, in a Saurophaganax bone bed a femur belonging to what's presumed to be Saurophaganax is believed to be so large it rivals Tyrannosaurs, but we often just go with the smaller, more complete specimen estimates to stay safe.
no!! this is different!!! 2014 was knuckle walking, this is palm walking!!!! more plausible!!!!!!
kind of satire for those who couldn't tell, but also i did kinda put thought into this as palm walking might actually be able to support the weight of Spinosaurus unlike knuckle walking although it's more likely that Spinosaurus was bipedal like most theropods hence the satirical connotation.
I was gonna make a joke about how you managed to time travel, but you went back to 2014 instead of just going straight to the cretaceous to see for yourself how the thing looked like.
That kind of reconstruction existed too: https://www.collecta.biz/en/collections/prehistoric-world/age-of-dinosaurs-1-40-scale/item/88737. This figure even got an award in 2014 for keeping up with the accuracy (10 years later it's super dated, but that's how all things with spino are...).
Being scientific here. Spino most likely couldn’t walk like this due to hand limitations, (or you could call it limb-itations) if it stood as a quadrupedal it would most likely be a “knuckle walking theropod”, not like indoraptor.
Take what i say w/ a grain o’ salt :) 🦖⛵️💧
as I said in another comment, I think the opposite is true. other Archosaurs such as Herrerasaurus have an incredible range of motion with their hands, being able to bend them backwards by as far as ~25°! furthermore a study on a Spinosaurus knuckle showed that Spinosaurus likely wouldn't support it's own weight on knuckle walking, but with palm walking, the weight is more evenly distributed throughout the hand so this is actually more plausible although the obviously more likely answer is that Spinosaurus was bipedal like most other theropods :D
I have another theory. Ancient aliens are real, but all they ever did was visit Earth during the Mesozoic and plant fake fossils (which we now know as Spinosaurus) to prank any future paleontologists that may evolve on the planet. The reason we haven’t detected aliens is because they’re all hiding from us. They’ll reveal themselves to us eventually, but only once the joke isn’t funny anymore.
I think the claws pointed inwards so the animal would have been walking on its knuckles. Like how a Megatherium is usually depicted as walking. That's pretty close to how I picture it though.
afaik it's already been determined that Spinosaurus wasnt capable of knuckle walking as knuckle walking couldnt support that kind of weight and other Archosaurs(such as Herrerasaurus) are already capable of bending their fingers backwards by an incredible margin so i dont doubt Spinosaurus couldve been able to do this to a much larger extent as well although it's much more likely that it looked like any other Spinosaurid. Sorry to nerd out, i just put a lot of thought into this lol!
as the title says, we dont have fossil material for the arms of Spinosaurus so it's not implausible to think it couldve evolved weight bearing forelimbs and backwards facing hands for more evenly distributed weight. Although as I said in another comment, a traditional bipedal Spinosaurid build is more likely.
We have its hand/its knuckle, it is implausible/we know it can perfectly balance with its legs alone in that position. Its hand isn't built for weight nor being walked on. Your opinion is outdated by like 10 years
Currently the scale of the legs are in question.
one knuckle is not nearly enough material to determine something like that. especially if it walked on its palms opposed to knuckles. i stated this in another comment and as I said in the previous comment, palm walking allows for more evenly distributed weight throughout the hand, allowing for much better weight bearing capabilities. on top of that, a neotype specimen from the Kem Kem Formation has nearly complete leg fossils so there's not much to question about their legs although i believe that specimen was smaller and possibly immature so there's a small chance they couldve changed in size with growth but it's doubtful.
You an idiot?
So what of its hand rotated outwards by 20 degrees it instantly snaps its own wrist?
Also it's claws would be worthless dull blunts and again aren't reinforced for walking on
what's with the hostility? everything ive said is backed up by studies and actual reasoning. as I said in another comment, Herrerasaurus has an incredible range of hand motion, being able to bend its hands backwards by as far as ~25° and again we have no fossil material for the full hand or arm of Spinosaurus so maybe it had dull claws and fished like a heron, with its head. It's not entirely implausible to think this as u claim, I honestly dont know why ur being so hostile, it's extinct reptiles, it's not THAT serious💀
No it's not backed up, it's all outdated and not incorrect.
You are flat out wring as hell. Herrassurus is a spinosaurid nor even a true dinosaur/neither have even a similar niche.
Ones a small 300lb predator and the both is a fisher the size of a bus.
Actually moronic lol
Final? Spino believes in no such thing, just wait til we find out they actually had wings or something lmao
I mean instead of having a keel, muscles could attach to the sail/s
Nah. Pretty sure spino had wheels
nevermind "could spino dive", I prefer to ask "could spino DRIVE" ✊💯
*"a real hero" starts blasting in the background*
a freaking pupper
A 45 foot pupper.
Semi wet 45 foot pupper
A slightly moistened very large good boy
A platypus? Spino the platypus!?
i might have to draw that now..
We have fingers etc
Yes, we, humans do have fingers.
That it also true
Or maybe they were toes?
We have a single piece of a half-broken phalanx, and it's undescribed.
Genuine question - how do paleontologists decide that this claw fragment they found is from the same animal as this other vertebra they found? Even if they found it in the exact same age sediment and in the same location, what's stopping it from being two completely seperate animals?
If it's found in the same location, right next to the fossil, in the same layer and roughly where the hand should be it makes sense. Other than that if it's in the same era, and belongs to the same formation etc. finding things that the species is known for etc too. Many ways off the top of my head. For example, if you find a finger belonging to a large spinosaurid, from the same formation, ecosystem, and era as spinosaurus it's assumed to be spinosaurus
I see, thanks for the explanation. The point about it being where you expect that part to be was a good one that I hadn't thought of. Even so, there are situations where multiple animals die in one big pile-up (eg: Velociraptor/Protoceratops) so I imagine this isn't completely foolproof.
Yeah, in Paleontology nothing is really 100%. Even the lips, it's still a theory and not 100% concrete, with evidence here and there against it. Predator traps and mass death due to flood etc are great as they preserve many specimens. Here's a fun one, code name leviathan, in a Saurophaganax bone bed a femur belonging to what's presumed to be Saurophaganax is believed to be so large it rivals Tyrannosaurs, but we often just go with the smaller, more complete specimen estimates to stay safe.
TIME TO LEAVE THEM ALL BE -HIND!
I love quadruped spino and I will choose to believe he's a sailpuppy/dragonsaur forever now
Spinopuppus This is cursed
Nah, pretty sure it had wings and flew like a plane
That was relevant in like 2014
no!! this is different!!! 2014 was knuckle walking, this is palm walking!!!! more plausible!!!!!! kind of satire for those who couldn't tell, but also i did kinda put thought into this as palm walking might actually be able to support the weight of Spinosaurus unlike knuckle walking although it's more likely that Spinosaurus was bipedal like most theropods hence the satirical connotation.
I was gonna make a joke about how you managed to time travel, but you went back to 2014 instead of just going straight to the cretaceous to see for yourself how the thing looked like.
Hey man, Time Machine fuel is not cheap, and it takes a whole lot less to reach 2014 than the cretaceous. OP's just being economical.
That kind of reconstruction existed too: https://www.collecta.biz/en/collections/prehistoric-world/age-of-dinosaurs-1-40-scale/item/88737. This figure even got an award in 2014 for keeping up with the accuracy (10 years later it's super dated, but that's how all things with spino are...).
interesting! i hope nobody has studied this too much so i can profit off it muahahaha!!!!
Interesting
I feel like they usually were bipedal however for brief periods of time they could go into a quadrupedal position.
Aquareliga in a nutshell.
Being scientific here. Spino most likely couldn’t walk like this due to hand limitations, (or you could call it limb-itations) if it stood as a quadrupedal it would most likely be a “knuckle walking theropod”, not like indoraptor. Take what i say w/ a grain o’ salt :) 🦖⛵️💧
as I said in another comment, I think the opposite is true. other Archosaurs such as Herrerasaurus have an incredible range of motion with their hands, being able to bend them backwards by as far as ~25°! furthermore a study on a Spinosaurus knuckle showed that Spinosaurus likely wouldn't support it's own weight on knuckle walking, but with palm walking, the weight is more evenly distributed throughout the hand so this is actually more plausible although the obviously more likely answer is that Spinosaurus was bipedal like most other theropods :D
I have another theory. Ancient aliens are real, but all they ever did was visit Earth during the Mesozoic and plant fake fossils (which we now know as Spinosaurus) to prank any future paleontologists that may evolve on the planet. The reason we haven’t detected aliens is because they’re all hiding from us. They’ll reveal themselves to us eventually, but only once the joke isn’t funny anymore.
They've done a center of gravity study that shows clear bipedialism.
wasnt there a study last year that showed Spinosaurus could hardly walk?
Absolutely not. The only thing close was a Twitter thread quickly debunked
oh, thank you!
ark spino
Wake up, new spinosaurus just dropped
I think the claws pointed inwards so the animal would have been walking on its knuckles. Like how a Megatherium is usually depicted as walking. That's pretty close to how I picture it though.
afaik it's already been determined that Spinosaurus wasnt capable of knuckle walking as knuckle walking couldnt support that kind of weight and other Archosaurs(such as Herrerasaurus) are already capable of bending their fingers backwards by an incredible margin so i dont doubt Spinosaurus couldve been able to do this to a much larger extent as well although it's much more likely that it looked like any other Spinosaurid. Sorry to nerd out, i just put a lot of thought into this lol!
Its hands and arms weren't built for walking. They'd just break.
as the title says, we dont have fossil material for the arms of Spinosaurus so it's not implausible to think it couldve evolved weight bearing forelimbs and backwards facing hands for more evenly distributed weight. Although as I said in another comment, a traditional bipedal Spinosaurid build is more likely.
We have its hand/its knuckle, it is implausible/we know it can perfectly balance with its legs alone in that position. Its hand isn't built for weight nor being walked on. Your opinion is outdated by like 10 years Currently the scale of the legs are in question.
one knuckle is not nearly enough material to determine something like that. especially if it walked on its palms opposed to knuckles. i stated this in another comment and as I said in the previous comment, palm walking allows for more evenly distributed weight throughout the hand, allowing for much better weight bearing capabilities. on top of that, a neotype specimen from the Kem Kem Formation has nearly complete leg fossils so there's not much to question about their legs although i believe that specimen was smaller and possibly immature so there's a small chance they couldve changed in size with growth but it's doubtful.
Yes it is, if one of the three knuckles can't support massive weight then none of them can
did you read anything of what I just said? knuckle walking and palm walking are vastly different.
You an idiot? So what of its hand rotated outwards by 20 degrees it instantly snaps its own wrist? Also it's claws would be worthless dull blunts and again aren't reinforced for walking on
what's with the hostility? everything ive said is backed up by studies and actual reasoning. as I said in another comment, Herrerasaurus has an incredible range of hand motion, being able to bend its hands backwards by as far as ~25° and again we have no fossil material for the full hand or arm of Spinosaurus so maybe it had dull claws and fished like a heron, with its head. It's not entirely implausible to think this as u claim, I honestly dont know why ur being so hostile, it's extinct reptiles, it's not THAT serious💀
No it's not backed up, it's all outdated and not incorrect. You are flat out wring as hell. Herrassurus is a spinosaurid nor even a true dinosaur/neither have even a similar niche. Ones a small 300lb predator and the both is a fisher the size of a bus. Actually moronic lol