Spinosaurus takes to the water
The largest known predatory dinosaur has a crocodile's snout, dense bones and a paddle-like tail.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 5.5 million years
- Known to
- ± 1 million years
- Era
- Cretaceous, Mesozoic
Spinosaurus grows longer than Tyrannosaurus and lives very differently: conical teeth and an elongated snout for gripping fish, nostrils set back from the tip, dense limb bones that reduce buoyancy, and a tall flexible fin-like tail described in 2020 that suggests active swimming rather than wading. The interpretation is contested — critics argue it was a shoreline hunter rather than a pursuit predator — but the case has moved a long way from the original assumption of a purely terrestrial giant. Its type specimen was destroyed in the bombing of Munich in 1944.