Biggest meat eating dinosaur that ever lived 'hunted its prey underwater'
dailystar.co.ukdinosaur would have dwarfed the mighty T. rex adapted to hunting underwater – making it the Cretaceous equivalent of a Great White Shark.
The mighty sea beast, named Spinosaurus, could grow up to 50 feet long and weigh in the region of 20 tons.A new analysis of the marine monster's bones has found it was adapted for an aquatic lifestyle.They were dense – just like those of today's penguins, hippos and alligators.This provided negative buoyancy - enabling Spinosaurus and its cousin Baryonyx to submerge themselves to kill.Spinosaurus was powered by a fin-like tail – capturing large, slippery fish with six-inch long razor sharp teeth.
It lived about 100 million years ago roaming the swamps of North Africa and belonged to a group of dinosaurs known as theropods – carnivores that included T.
rex . Lead author Dr Matteo Fabbri, of the Field Museum, Chicago, said: "The fossil record is tricky - among spinosaurids, there are only a handful of partial skeletons. "Other studies have focused on interpretation of anatomy, but clearly if there are such opposite interpretations regarding the same bones, this is already a clear signal that maybe those are not the best proxies for us to infer the ecology of extinct animals." Very dense bones are used as a proxy for aquatic adaptation.
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