Re: Guts-Eating Spinosaurs

["Fam Jansma" <fam.jansma@worldonline.nl>]

Jura wrote:

>Just how delicate is a spinosaur skull? From what I've seen of the skull of
_Baryonyx_, they look to be fairly sturdy. They might not have been made for
whatever it was tyrannosaurs were doing, but I wouldn't really call it:
"delicate."

The skull in at least Suchomimus is very narrow, as is the lower jaw of the
holotype of Spinosaurus aegyptacus. When something is narrow, it is easily
breakable and when you are dealing with struggling fish with it's body
moving all around, the tail could snap the skull. Baryonyx was a relatively
basal creature, so it is logical it is more sturdy in the jaw area, but the
Spinosaurus maroccanus had a very slender jaw. Taken to the extreme in the
7ft skull. Bye the way, does anyone have a picture of this skull that I
could possibly have?

>Well, maybe _Irritator_, but that was an exceptional skull (and an
imaginative misuse of plaster).

Sure was, with a part of the right maxilla placed on the top of it's head.
Has anybody noticed in the skull of Irritator that the part with the
quadrate and all is placed lower than the rest of the skull? Not just a
little, it makes about an angle 30 degrees. What on earth could be the use
for a skull like that? Flamingos have similair constructed skulls, but I
don't see Irritator hanging it's head up-side-down to catch it's food.

Rutger Jansma