Dave Hone

It's got quite a long neck.

Spinosaurus, and at least a couple of the other closest relatives to it, a thing called Ichthyovenator from, I can't remember if it's Thailand or Laos, I think it's Laos, has this giant elongated bit to the top of the vertebrae, and so it gives it this giant sail along the back.

Spinosaurus, at least, possibly Ichthyovanita, probably not any of the others.

Then has this weird, like, thin, like, newt-like expanse to the top of the tail, giving it kind of like a giant oar paddle appearance.

Mostly they have very large arms with giant claws on the hands.

Um, and Spinosaurus at least appears to have really quite short legs, but the others don't.

Um, but again, so Spinosaurus is like totally iconic, but if you look at something like Baryonyx from the UK or, um, Suchomimus from Niger, um,

It's still got the same head, it's still got the same neck, it's still got the same arms, but it doesn't have this sail and it doesn't have this tail and it probably doesn't have short legs.

So Spinosaurus is super weird and exaggerated version of what is already a kind of super weird group of theropods.

So Spinosaurus is properly strange.

And then, as you kind of hinted at, like super controversial as well, because various papers have...

claimed it's a diver or a really good swimmer, and I think the evidence for that is very weak at best.

So your book is going to be... You're going to start some shit with your book?

I think I already have, to be honest.

Like, I've written...

I've written three major papers and one in particular with my colleague, Tom Holtz, where we frankly savaged the idea that it's a good swimmer.

And then other people have since, including actually some of the authors who were on the original paper claiming it did swim well, have now effectively reversed their position and said it didn't.

so probably still t-rex i mean the the jurassic park spinosaurus was pretty good for its time um because some of the stuff that i've just talked about particularly the short legs were suggested way back in 1910 1912 but it was really uncertain um now it appears to be more likely the case than not the tail was unknown at this point so it was given a very generic tail um

But the crocodile-like head is pretty good.

The neck's a bit short.