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Post by Cr1TiKaL on Dec 31, 2013 3:40:04 GMT -5
And who's to say the "rhino on steroids" look is more accurate than the horse-like gait one for elasmotherium? And spinosaurus causing only very minimal damage with its jaws? Seriously? Its bite force is actually rather powerful, and since when did it lack an adaptively wide gape? And the fish that spinosaurus preyed on were pretty huge (like shown previously) and were covered in thick scales that would be much tougher than the rhino's skin. Yep, for all we know it could have looked like this: Also, I believe the Elasmotherium's closest relatives was the Sumatran Rhinoceros, which is a rather small rhino. Big animal, but small rhino. If the horse gait of Elasmotherium is actually real, then I'm favouring Spino even more here.
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Godzillasaurus
Invertebrate
Reptile (both extant and extinct) and kaiju enthusiast
Posts: 314
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Post by Godzillasaurus on Dec 31, 2013 10:14:43 GMT -5
Reading comprehension- you need it... Reread my post please; I was talking about skull/bone-related and flank damage coming from spinosaurus, not any actual deep puncturing damage itself. Spinosaurus' bite was certainly deadly for what it was evolved to cope with (piscivory), but the simple fact of it is that spinosaurus, like many slender-snouted animals with conical dentition, was poorly designed for killing large and very stout creatures. And in any regard, the most efficient way for it to kill would be with precise but et quick perpendicular biting, in which regard it would likely need to clamp down completely with the more generalized sections of its snout. Simply, killing the rhino this way would be difficult, as it seems unlikely that its snout would be able to completely engulf any vulnerable region (such as the neck) and risk injury, as the rhino was of course abbey stout animal. Now, if the neck of the mammal was slender enough, spinosaurus could definitely kill it if a bite could puncture deeply enough and pierce the windpipe or in between the vertebrae (assuming that this creature has quite a bit if muscle and fat reserves, considering its environment)
Bro, I know that; its snout was still very specialized and evolved for piscivory. The main reason why its snout was strong is the fact that it was not very fragile in the realm of gripping large fish effectively, but yet yet it likely still lacked an exceptionally powerful bite and certainly any such aptitude for crushing. The bite force argument is brought up far too often in discussions concerning spinosaurus, but it is simply particularly irrelevant, because spinosaurus evolved a lifestyle that did not require crushing morphology or a super strong bite. As long as its teeth were sharp and slender enough to pierce efficiently while still being conical in shape, it was able to cope with its respective lifestyle of hunting fish primarily. And as such, as long as its teeth could pierce deeply (which they were adapted to do), killing smallish and at least partially slim terrestrial creatures is not a problem with classic perpendicular biting
It did not need it. Spinosaurus was a primarily piscivorous animal; what is more necessary is instead strong jaws and dentition (again, NOT crushing morphology but rather an anatomy more adept at gripping). It hunted very large and powerful fish, and was fundamentally not adapted to hunt larger animals overall (predation on larger animals coming from spinosaurids rather relies on their size advantage in some cases. So this animals would have certainly never tackled large herbivores like paralititan). Whereas something like allosaurus not only evolved a much wider gape but also much thinner and more knife-like dentition to attack the flanks of large animals and utilized the hatchet-bite on particularly smaller prey animals.
If spinosaurus was "so well adapted" for killing very large animals (talking animals much larger than itself), then why does it not have an impressively deep rostrum? Why does it lack dentition specialized for slicing and not gripping and/or puncturing? Why does it clearly possess a very gracile snout at the tip that was obviously designed to precisely pick out fish from the water?
I know that too; you did not read any of my past posts thoroughly enough. Spinosaurus was in fact very well adapted for catching fish as large as mawsonia, but smaller animals would take precedence as more common food options and mawsonia would instead be more of an occasional food item.
Again, spinosaurus is in no way ill-adapted for taking down such large fish (and was actually very well adapted in fact), but one the size of an elephant would be pushing its normal (common) dietary limits in favor of particularly smaller animals (such as a fish 10 feet shorter for example. THAT would be a prime example of a common item making up spinosaurus' diet). But about the whole "scales" thing, spinosaurus' thick and conical dentition was designed for piercing deeply. In the fish' case, the entire animal would not be as thick as the rhino and would instead be quite slender (powerful, but not impressively bulky). For the last time, I am in no way saying that spinosaurus was incapable of causing any sort of deep damage to the rhino, but it would likely be very subtle UNLESS the rhino was actually much thinner and more gracile than what I make it out to be.
I'm sorry to say this, but your logic is immensely flawed. You often hypothesize without any actual reason and yet claim others to be wrong when the evidence is clearly right there in front of you.
An animal can be very large in size and yet be closely related to an animal that is much smaller. The Chinese alligator and deinosuchus are both closely related, small varanids and megalania, hyrax and elephant (Dinopithecus, how closely related are they actually? You would know this), domestic cat and Siberian tiger, and finally bottlenose dolphin and blue whale. Plenty of animals are closely related and are yet distinguished by a decent size margin.
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Post by Dinopithecus on Dec 31, 2013 13:29:41 GMT -5
Hyraxes and elephants? The closest thing they have in common is being members of Paenungulata.
And again, the mounts of Elasmotherium apparently with shorter legs and all that stuff are inaccurate, Elasmotherium apparently had longer legs and all that crap. The pic thylacoleo posted is an example of the latter. Somewhat less rhino-like in build apparently.
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Godzillasaurus
Invertebrate
Reptile (both extant and extinct) and kaiju enthusiast
Posts: 314
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Post by Godzillasaurus on Jan 1, 2014 19:08:59 GMT -5
Hyraxes and elephants? The closest thing they have in common is being members of Paenungulata. Well, you still get my point. Animals being closely related do not necessarily have to be similar in size or build
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Post by Dinopithecus on Jan 2, 2014 15:06:43 GMT -5
I was just asking which comparison when you said, "Dinopithecus, how closely related are they actually? You would know this". Of course they can vary in size.
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Post by Dinopithecus on Jan 2, 2014 15:08:39 GMT -5
"Animals being closely related do not necessarily have to be similar in size or build"
Which is actually what I agree with. It's true Elasmotherium is a rhinocerotid, yet it might not have been built like modern rhinos.
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