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Films such as the Jurassic Park and the Jurassic world have made us fascinated with Dinosaurs but the truth is they were far scarier than we ever even realized. From this surprisingly dangerous nature of herbivores to the unexpected pack mentality of the Mapusaurus, these are the 5 scary things about dinosaurs.
T-Rex’s Worst Nightmare
Overview
Usually, the t-rex is billed as the most terrifying of these monsters. However, it wasn’t the biggest one that title goes to the “Spinosaurus”. You’ll know these fellas as the main antagonist in the third Jurassic Park movie which I’m sure we can all agree is the best of the franchise.
The Spinosaurus is often considered a candidate for the deadliest dinosaur of them all. Recent research has shown Spinosaurus Egyptian S2 quite rightly give him his full name is most likely the largest species of carnivorous dinosaur that ever lived. It could get hungry and when it did, could eat a lot.
Height
The Spinosaurus was among the largest of all known carnivorous dinosaurs larger than Tyrannosaurus, Gigantasaurus, and Carcharodontosaurus. Estimates published in 2005, 2007 and 2008 suggested that it was between 12.6 and 18 meters were 41 to 59 feet in length and 7 to 20.9 tons or 7.7 to 23 short tons in weight. New estimates published in 2014 and 2018 based on a more complete specimen supported the earlier research, finding that Spinosaurus could reach lengths of 15 to 15.6 meters or 49 to 51 feet.
Weight
The latest estimates suggest a weight of a whopping 6.4 to 7.2 tonnes for 7.1 to 7.9 short tons.
Why exactly do we call it the T-Rexes worst nightmare?
Because it had a truly intense bite for a while the Spinosaurus bite was thought to be relatively weak because it mainly ate fish, so wouldn’t need an intense bite force. You don’t need an incredibly intense bite when all you’re doing is nibbling on salmon, that’s a delicate diet. But, newer thinking suggests, its bite force may have been a lot stronger than we initially thought. Our initial estimates were that the Spinosaurus bite force was around 5,000, that’s five times stronger than a hyena, five times more than a bull shark, double that of an alligator. So, it’s already got a good set of teeth and a strong jaw but paleontologists now think the bite of the Spinosaurus may have been far stronger than that.
Spinosaurus is one of the few dinosaurs known to be able to swim. No matter where the t-rex tries died, the Spinosaurus is going to find it and take a bite out of it.
A Noisy Tail
Overview
The tail of the Apatosaurus could literally break the sound barrier. The Apatosaurus which lived about 155 to 159 million years ago and weighed close to 20 tons. It was twice as heavy as a t-rex, three and a half times as heavy as an elephant, and 350,000 times heavier than a tennis ball.
They were quite easily, one of the biggest animals in the history of the earth. It was once believed, that the Apatosaurus was too massive to support its own weight on dry land. So, it was theorized that this sauropod must have lived partly submerged in water perhaps in a swamp.
Its noisy tail
Its tail was their weapon of choice often utilized like a bullwhip in combat. According to computer calculations, they could whip their tails so fast that it broke the sound barrier creating a sonic boom. This would have made a cannon-like boom that would have been heard for miles, in order to prove these paleontologists have done the next best thing to time-travel.
They have created and performed test slaps with a model replica of the Apatosaurus tail made of aluminum, stainless steel, neoprene, and Teflon. The 12 foot long or 3.6-meter model is just 1/4 the size of a sauropod tail but it is still able to produce the distinctive crack that indicates it can break the sound barrier when whipped around.
The tail was made by “Intellectual Ventures”
Nathan Mayer volt, founder and CEO of Intellectual Ventures, a company that invests in technology patents and research. He went on to say it is, “of course, impossible to create a real tail out of flesh and blood but this model every single bone, there are 82 bones in the tail it has the correct dimensions and has the correct joint angles and then each vertebra has weights on it to simulate the weight of the flesh”.
If the model is true, it means Chuck Yeager was not necessarily the first resident of Earth to go faster than sound, of course, the Apatosaurus didn’t get their whole bodies moving faster than sound, just one tiny part but it still counts.
Tail as a weapon
Now while this incredible and terrifying tail may have been their weapon of choice it wasn’t exactly an effective one, just a loud one but it had other great uses. For example, it would have been used as a warning or a way to scare potential predators. They also would have stomped their feet on the ground and if this didn’t crush attackers the tail whip and the stomping would have made a lot of chaotic noise, hopefully scaring off any potential predators.
Dangerous Vegetarians
Overview
Just because something or someone doesn’t eat meat that doesn’t mean they’re unscary passive or weak, just look at Morrissey. You definitely lose against him in a fight especially if he had a few drinks in him. The Triceratops is the Morrissey of the dinosaur kingdom. The Triceratops may have been an herbivore but you still wouldn’t want to mess with one. Even though they wouldn’t eat you that doesn’t mean they couldn’t seriously mess you up.
Height and weight
They were 10 feet tall 30 feet long and they weighed 4 to 6 tonnes. That’s hard to visualize, something to give you comparison is African elephants which are the biggest living land animal and are about 8 to 13 feet tall at most 25 feet long and they weigh about 5 to 7 tons, so a triceratops was comparable in size to a mid-sized elephant at 6 tons. They were two and a half times as heavy as a giraffe.
Their horns
The Triceratops and his most notable feature is its three horns there were two above the eyes and one above their mouth. When a triceratops reached adulthood, the horns were three feet long and curved upwards and they would use these horns to engage in pretty brutal fights.
Fights of Triceratops
In actuality, they would routinely fight other Triceratops over mates and territory but they didn’t stop at their own. The Triceratops would regularly fight off our larger dinosaurs including t-rexes themselves.
Despite being heavier taller and having a far more intense bite force, the Triceratops would regularly win fights against the T-rex. Evidence, they would have been able to fend off a T-rex was that a triceratops fossil had a healed wound from a T-rex his bite. Suggesting that Triceratops was able to fight off the dominant predator and lived long enough after the encounter for the bite to heal.
The Mapusauras Hunted In Pack
Overview
Knowing how dinosaurs behaved is kind of difficult because the only thing researchers have to base their guesses on the fossil clues, that are millions of years old. They just can’t go out into the wild and observe them that is one reason, they don’t definitely know if dinosaurs hunted in packs.
Pack hunting
While there are some evidence to suggest that a few species did live in packs, it’s unclear if pack hunting among carnivores was common or not. However, one large carnivore that I’ve been a pack animal is the Mapusaurus.
Researchers believe this because in a quarry in Patagonia, they found more than a half a dozen Mapusaurus bones. This would suggest that they at least live together when they died. The idea of dinosaurs hunting in packs, especially the Mapusaurus is absolutely terrifying.
Height and weight
Mapusaurus was a large theropod and was roughly similar in size to its close relative Gigantasaurus with the largest known individuals estimated as about 10.2 meters or 33 feet in length or more and weighing about three metric tons or 3.3 short tons. In layman’s terms, they were really big.
It’s believed that they lived together in order to take down the biggest dinosaur that lived in the area, the Argentinosaurus which weighed 10 times more than the Mapasaurus.
The Argentinosaurus’ Eggs
Weight
They weighed over a hundred tons, that’s 14 times heavier than a T-rex and 150 times as heavy as a cow.
The size of their egg
The scariest thing about the Argentinosaurus was that its eggs measured a full foot in diameter, as a result of physical and biological constraints, there’s an upper limit to how large any given dinosaur egg can be. Considering its huge size, Argentinosaurus probably brushed up against that limit.
Based on comparisons with the eggs of other Titanosaurus, the type of Dinosaur to which the Argentinosaurus belongs, it seems likely that Argentinosaurus eggs measured about a foot in diameter and that female laid up to ten or fifteen eggs at a time. In that, at least one hatchling would evade predators and survive into adulthood those are some serious eggs.