It took a whole lot of meat to feed even one species of huge carnivorous dinosaur, so how did a number of survive side-by-side within the Jurassic and Cretaceous intervals with out ravenous? We’d lastly have the reply
Earth
5 December 2022
Paul Blow
OF ALL the “horrible lizards”, there was none fairly so unusual and imposing as Spinosaurus. This croc-snouted carnivore may attain 14 metres in size and weigh greater than 7 tonnes. These very important statistics put it within the working for the most important terrestrial carnivore of all time. The dinosaur even obtained a starring position because the central villain within the 2001 film Jurassic Park III, spurring limitless web debates over who would actually win in a toothy conflict between this bumpy backed reptile and Tyrannosaurus.
In actuality, such a combat would by no means have occurred: Spinosaurus lived in northern Africa about 100 million years in the past, whereas Tyrannosaurus stalked North America between about 66 and 68 million years in the past. However that isn’t to say that confrontations between colossal carnivorous dinosaurs didn’t happen. Tough as it might be to think about a number of multi-tonne predators co-existing in the identical habitat, such territory sharing was widespread throughout the Jurassic and Cretaceous geological intervals. The query going through palaeontologists is that this: how may a number of large carnivores carve up a single ecosystem between them?
We are actually closing in on a solution. Palaeontologists have spent many years piecing collectively the each day lives of dinosaurs like Spinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus, charting the whole lot from food regimen to how these well-known beasts grew up. As researchers put flesh on the bones of those big carnivores and envisage the roles they performed of their historical atmosphere, one factor is turning into clear: we might have essentially misunderstood the best way they lived and hunted.
For greater than a century after the phrase “dinosaur” …
