by Robin Hussey

Created on: February 07, 2009   Last Updated: March 11, 2009

While riding in a car with two paleontologists and one young budding paleontologist, believe it or not this conversation took place and was hotly debated. "What is your favorite kind of dinosaur?" Of, course the real question posed was what was the most ferocious dinosaur? The eleven year old who posed the question had been heavily influenced by the Jurassic Park movies, and was a big fan of Spinosaurus. Jurrassic Park, while a very entertaining movie, was historically very inaccurate. For instance, Velociraptor was depicted as about 2 feet taller than any actual fossils have revealed. The two paleontologists were of the mind that the T-Rex, largest of the tyrannosaurs was the most ferocious. They had been more heavily influenced by their discoveries and investigations than by the less accurate movie version of the dinosaurs.

Why not the Spinosuarus?

The Spinosaurus was discovered in the dessert of Egypt in 1911 by German Scientist Ernest Stomer. Unfortunately, the museum where the skeleton was stored was destroyed by bombings in World War II. Since there have been no additional discoveries of a complete Spinosaurus, the fossil recored is sketchy. There has never been a complete skeleton found, but evidence suggests that the Spinosaurus was primarily a fish eating coastal dinosaur. The long skull suggests that it may have been a more crocodilian variety of dinosaur. While it may have been larger than the tyrannosaurs, in the dinosaur world size did not often equal ferocity. The largest dinosaur found on record was Argentinosaurus, measuring up to 130 long and weighing up to 100 tons. While this is an imposing size, and certainly would be terrifying, I don't think that anyone would argue that Argentinosaurus, a plant eating sarapod, was the most ferocious of dinosaurs.

T-Rex

While the T-Rex may have been slightly smaller that Spinosaurus, the true tale is in the teeth. T-Rex had sharp, serrated teeth that grew back when they were lost, similar to today's shark. While the arms of the T-Rex may look small and useless it is estimated that they were strong enough to lift 400 pounds with those tiny, useless looking arms. The T-Rex may not only be the most ferocious dinosaur, but the most ferocious animal that ever lived. With it's replaceable serrated teeth, it was more like a land shark than the crocodilian dinosaur, Spinosaurus.

Getting back to the conversation at the beginning of the article, my 11 year old budding paleontologist may have been too heavily influenced by the movies and not paying close enough attention to the facts.

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