New Spinosaurus Hunting Techniques

      Since people are doing speculations about the new design of Spinosaurus, I thought I should do my own. For mine I decided to do Spino’s hunting techniques. To start off, I will do a description of him. I hope you enjoy this and if you see any inaccuracies please tell me and I will fix them.

     The new discoveries of Spinosaurus have radically changed our view of how it lived. Based on new discoveries, we knew that he more water-based, than the original version. It has a completely new design with flat feet that might have had webbing like a duck, it had a different shape. Instead of a half oval it was more like a tall sailfish fin. It had a crocodile-like head and a long tail that was probably used for swimming. The legs are now much shorter making it very hard for it to walk bipedal, suggesting that it was semi-quadrupedal, something like this:

Even possibly being semi-quadrupedal, it must have been hard to walk like that. It might have really stressed-out it’s wrist joints. Because of this it most-likely lived a large part of its life in the water. It probably ate mostly fish with the occasional large herbivore that wondered into the water.

     Now let’s discuss its hunting techniques, and what it ate. Being like a crocodile, it probably ate fish most of the time. Acting like a penguin, it might have dived under the water, under a school of fish pushing them to the surface and snapping them up in his long, toothy jaws. That is only one of the possible ways. This theory seems to match its physiology. Take a look at its skeleton:

It was very long and slender like a fish or a Marine Iguana, which spend a lot of time in water most of their lives. As Something Real suggested, the fin might have attacked like a rudder helping it glide through the water. The long tail might have acted as a long paddle, as did its feet.

     Another way is that it could have hunted was out of the water. I first saw this on the first episode of Planet Dinosaur. It would have its jaws halfway in the water, using the nerves on the end of the snout to sense the vibrations of fish in the water. It would wait until one is close enough and grab it with its jaws. It would bring it onto the shore and start eating it. After it ate one it would probably get more until it was full.  This theory might have to be changed slightly to accommodate its new physiology. The previous theory seems a more plausible one, in my mind.

     It could have hunted like a snapping turtle as well. Lying absolutely still, waiting for a fish to swim by, and SNAP!! It would grab the fish and swallow it whole. It’s probably the second most possible theory. Why, because it didn’t require much work. All it had to do was sit there and wait. It was relatively easy.

     What if they hunted in small packs to get fish? The way it would do that is one would drive a school of fish towards several individuals, which would it drive the fish to other Spinos which and lead to an area where they couldn’t and the Spinos would feast. It would possibly look like this artwork done by National Geographic’s:

     Enough about fish, let’s discuss how they hunted big prey. Most likely they hunted like crocodiles, all of them gathering and attacking their prey. One might attack the prey, pulling it away from the main group. The others would then attack it, ripping it apart, and slashing at it, then eating it. Unlike crocodiles, that can do a death roll, Spinosaurus couldn’t. The sail would inhibit that. There aren’t as many theories for the large, since it was quite easy if the migrated, like modern zebras and wilder beasts do in Africa.

     This next theory is for single combat, one Spino and one prey item. They could do this by diving under the water and grabbing the prey’s leg, pulling it to deeper waters. If it succeeded it would either drown it, or claw at it, making it die of blood loss. If it was impossible then it would probably bite the prey’s neck and hack at it with its claws, again die of blood loss.

     Well that’s all that I have. I hope you find these plausible and please comment to share your own theories about how the Spinosaurus hunted.