Illustration of Tyrannosaurus rex
Roger Harris/Getty Photos/Science Photograph Library
A better take a look at the skulls of gigantic dinosaurs reveals some most popular to shred their prey, whereas others attacked with bone-crushing pressure.
Andre Rowe and Emily Rayfield on the College of Bristol within the UK seemed on the skulls of 18 species of theropods from throughout the Mesozoic Period. This various group of dinosaurs, which incorporates T. Rex, Giganotosaurus and Spinosaurus, walked on their hind legs and had massive heads and massive, sharp tooth.
Regardless of the dinosaurs’ similarities, nevertheless, their behaviour shouldn’t be regarded as “one dimension suits all”, says Eric Snively at Oklahoma State College. Giganotosaurus’ skinny, serrated tooth, “like a cross between an ideal white shark and a Komodo dragon”, had been suited to slashing large swaths of flesh from prey, says Snively. In the meantime, the semi-aquatic Spinosaurus was “like a fin-backed heron with the physique of a Wiener canine, and tooth like a crocodile”, higher tailored to consuming very massive fish, he says.
After taking 3D scans of the surfaces of the skulls, the researchers investigated the dinosaurs’ chunk mechanics by utilizing a way for modelling stress in bridges. By evaluating how every dinosaur’s muscle tissues hooked up to the cranium bones with trendy family members like birds and crocodiles, they discovered Giganotosaurus and Spinosaurus had a a lot weaker chunk than the evolutionarily youthful Tyrannosaurus, which used its shorter, thicker cranium to assault its prey with “bone-crunching” pressure. “It seems, tyrannosaurs had been biting so laborious they had been truly stressing their skulls greater than we anticipated,” says Snively.
“The feeding methods of those high predators are extra advanced than we thought prior to now,” says Fion Waisum Ma at Beipiao Pterosaur Museum of China. “T-Rex lived later in the course of the Late Cretaceous Interval, when searching was extremely aggressive”, she says, which may have impressed its “distinctive feeding technique”.
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