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Pappasaurus — Spinosaurus aegyptiacus
Published: 2014-09-23 22:44:32 +0000 UTC; Views: 2776; Favourites: 54; Downloads: 7
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Description
Name Meaning: Spine lizardDiet: Piscivore (preying on large fish and plesiosaurs)
Length: 50-60 feet
Time Period: in the Mid Cretaceous period (112-97 million years ago)
Fossils found: Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia
Skeletal drawing based of Spinosaurus revisited skeletal drawing by Miyess
Coloration based part of the Great White Pelican, Green Anaconda, Leopard frog, and a flying dragon.
I did update my spino, so I hope that you guys love my picture.
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Comments: 41
ooh that is really fantastic quite realistic though i'd slightly change the colours
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I know, thank you very much.
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Thanks its nice to meet you.
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You're welcome- and nice to meet you too.
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I think Spinosaurus, as i envisioned it, would have been a bipedal dinosaur capable of swimming and dominating land. While mostly a fish-eater, it was also opportunistic and can hunt down other dinosaurs as well as small mammals and pterosaurs, making it the ultimate predator for both land and water. Spinosaurus is may favorite and so is Triceratops.
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No the land predator of the time was Carcharodontosaurus. Not that Spino wasn't formidable even on land.
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actually, I think there must have been competition between the two giants. Just saying.
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Only in Kem Kem where, due to the lack of herbivores, the predators formed 85% of the animal biomass.
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Predators forming ~85% of a terrestrial biomass? Very unlikely.
When an animal eats, only a small portion of the energy gained becomes new body mass. This effect is compounded as you go higher up on the food chain.
Superpredators are rare and relatively sparse for this reason while herbivores are all over the place.
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Well it was an aquatic ecosystem so that density of predators is normal.
In the world's most pristine reefs, 85% of the biomass is sharks and everything is on the verge of starvation.
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It wasn't a pure aquatic ecosystem, there were a good number of non-semiaquatic fauna found there such as "Brachiosaurus" nougaredi, Sauroniops, an indeterminate abelisaurid, and an indeterminate dromaeosaurid. It was more of a wetland.
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But there are still so many carnivores that unless this system ran like an aquatic one (huge predator biomass constantly mowing down an ever-growing amount of prey), it would not work.
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I think the problem is that you see every discovered Kem Kem taxon having the same amount of individuals per species, or that you are strictly restricting yourself to the known palaeofauna, or a combination of the two.
It's very likely that there were a whole load of undiscovered herbivores in that formation, and even IF there were more carnivorous taxa, the herbivore population would very likely still be more numerous due to having a greater number of individuals per taxon.
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But it is far from impossible that the ecosystem never needed large herbivores.
While I believe other herbivores would eventually be found, the powerhouse was definitely the water.
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A wetland is not a marine environment. Based on what can be inferred from basically every non-polar terrestrial ecosystem known, there were more herbivores than carnivores.
And please refrain from using the word "definitely" when the subject is palaeoecology. The reason is obvious.
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This wasn't a non-polar terrestrial ecosystem so your argument is invalid.
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So you expect me to believe that brachiosaurids, abelisaurids(indeterminate ones as of now), and carcharodontosaurids had to live in an aquatic ecosystem? Clearly this was more of a wet, but still terrestrial, ecosystem.
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think of the tigers in mangroves.
They are not built for it, but they had no choice.
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Mangrove environments are not true aquatic ecosystems and their fauna is not ~85% predators in terms of biomass. Terrestrial ecosystems just aren't up for that much predator biomass.
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But how do you explain the large numbers of theropods, predatory fish, and crocodilomorphs without a large herbivore base? surely you would have found them by now.
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Preservational bias(crocodiles, spinosaurs, and fish have a better chance of being fossilized due to their habitats, the more aquatic you are, the closer you are to sediments), plus the fact that the vast majority of dinosaurs are undiscovered and it just so happen that we uncovered the predator-dense part of the Kem Kem beds.
Btw, the herbivorous taxa present in the other parts of North Africa(Paralititan, Aegyptosaurus, Ouranosaurus, Lurdusaurus, Nigersaurus) probably were present, or had a close relative present in the Kem Kem region, it's not like there was an ocean splitting N. Africa during the Middle Cretaceous.
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the last three lived 15 million years earlier.
I agree that herbivores were present but the fact even land theropods outnumber herbivores should indicate a predator-oriented habitat.
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Similar, related creatures then.
You mean known land theropod taxa outnumber known currently-discovered herbivore taxa. Predator-oriented habitats on land would collapse.
You can simply search "why are there more herbivores than carnivores?" on google.
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Why is it impossible that the prey may breed much faster, so having a higher net productivity, and that the predators may eat each other so do not need to eat herbivores?
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"Why is it impossible that the prey may breed much faster, so having a higher net productivity"
That would mean more prey than predators.
"the predators may eat each other so do not need to eat herbivores?"
Okay, so get this.
When a herbivore eats a plant, only a small portion of the energy from the plant gets stored in the creature. When a predator eats this herbivore, the energy gained by the predator is only a small portion of the stored energy of the prey. When another predator eats this predator, the energy gained by the higher-level predator is only a small portion of the stored energy of the lower-level predator, and so on.
Due to this, the herbivores are relatively abundant, with populations decreasing as you get higher up in the food chain, with apex predators being comparatively rare. An ecosystem composed mainly of predators eating predators is not really that self-sustaining.
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How do you explain that there were and were ecosystems that naturally have a high predator biomass, and the prey breeds faster but are constantly being killed off by the predators, keeping the biomass low?
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Show me those instances.
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I never knew coral reefs were terrestrial ecosystems
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Thought you meant any systems.
And there always is the chance this was amphibious as well.
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Spinosaurus, in Egypt, may have hunted down sauropods like Paralititan just as it would hunt for fish.
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I highly doubt it. It probably preferred juveniles.
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Well the only theropods built to kill sauropods are the carnosaurs.
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np. also, come see my new art if you wish to see.
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nope what do you mean nope? Well ok sure but I would love to see thanks.
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I sorry for the Nope part. i actually meant to say No Problem.
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