Re: Regarding Spinosaurus

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

>      I figured that if a large skull like that hit the
> shore bottom it might cause some damage to the thinner
> elements. A tiny bird could recover, but a large
> spinosaur would have alot of inertia behind the head.

Prehaps Spinosaurus was just too good to avoid slamming its head into the 
bottom in the first place? I'm pretty sure Aquila chrysaetos and other 
raptors in general would splatter their butt all over the ground in an ugly 
mess of feathers and gore if they missed their prey and reacted too slowly 
to their obscenely small reaction time to come out of their 200mph+ dive. 
But somehow, they avoid that problem enough to allow for that kind of 
hunting behaviour. I wouldn't restrict a particular type of behaviour based 
on what might happen if it went awry. Animals deal with extreme risks all 
the time. It's really hard to determine to behaviour of an animal based on 
what might go wrong for the animal might be good at not going wrong in the 
first place!

>     The posteriorly-migrated nares might indicate that
> the tip of the snout was submerged often enough to
> make some modification to the region necessary. I'd
> like to know what position the internal nares were in,
> because if the animal kept much of its jaws in the
> water I would expect them to be pushed further back
> too. One final question: Does procumbent dentition
> indicate (_Masiakasaurus_ excluded) anything about the
> strategy used when fishing for a meal? Do animals that
> have such dentition "snatch" fish with a quick jab?

That probably has something going for it. If nailing fish while submerged 
was just as efficent as the jab, and with less risk, I don't see why it's 
not possible. However it's almost impossible to tell the behaviour just by 
the bones. Maybe the animal just didn't know any better?

>     What reason to we have to speculate that
> spinosaurs fed like a Heron? Maybe someone with a
> different mindset could give me a few pointers.

My personal pet idea is that they nailed their prey with a combination of 
claw and jaw. The huge arms were there for something...

Cool!

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