Re: Armoured Spinosaurus?

["no go" <honkietong@hotmail.com>]

> No epidermal coverings, nor any other form of outer-body ornament have ever
> been found on or near a spinosaurus skeleton. So in other words, there is
> absolutely no proof that ol' spino had any form of outer armor.
>
> In my opinion, the team at Stan Winston studio's made the hand claws of the
> spinosaurus far too small in JP3. As you can see from a skeletal diagram in 
> a
> recent issue of Prehistoric Times the claws [or the more lavishly termed
> "meat-hooks"] of spinosaurus were far larger than is seen in the movie. 
> These
> mega-claws, [also in my opinion] would have been [in reality] the
> spinosaurids main killing weapons; which would have been far more 
> devastating
> than it's lightly built jaws [which is seen in the movie].
>
> Peace....
>
>
>           Mark the illustrator

A truly interesting topic, though it appears we are having heavy Hollywood 
intonations here...ugh...

The size of the claws marks up another oddity about the JP3 movie...the 
claws in the robot Spinosaur used in the movie did seem to be overly 
small...(or is the the result of the claw seeming small on the overdone 
arms?) While if you look at the CGI model in some scenes, you'll notice the 
killer claw is missing altogether and the hands are just your generic 
three-claw (one of the claws seem larger then the others, but the difference 
is quite small). And if we look at the abysmal Rex-A-Tax JP3 toys, ignore 
the horrible dumpy Tyrannosaurus with the oversized primitive foot (undone 
about 7 years of Arctometatarsalian studies there) and the oversized arms, 
and go on to the strange looking Spinosaurus toy, and you'll realize the 
killer claw is missing altogether and the hand is just a normal three-claw 
(or at least I could not tell). A collector would have found it hard to 
decide between the JP3 merchandise and the Barney line of cute annoying 
dinosaurs...  :-}

It also seems to me the selection of Spinosaurus is based on nothing other 
then sheer size. (Okay, it appears they had some prodding from someone...) 
Which seems to me like a poor choice for the morphological features of the 
Spinosaurids in general make them not a good choice for the kind of "movie 
monsteress" requirements put up in JP3. It seems to me a better candidate 
for the new bad guy should me more in the lines of Giganotosaurus (though 
T.rex would still seem to me more of a match with his superior speed and 
hitting power), which would have made for a more "scientific" movie monster 
without pulling too many gimmicks...

I guess life must go on...

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