Jurassic Park taught us that the most fearsome of the prehistoric lizards that roamed the Earth was the aggressive predator Tyrannosaurus. But the movie, as is often the case, did not tell us the whole truth. Millions of years ago, there were much more terrible predators on the planet, in comparison with which the Tyrannosaurus will seem like a child's toy! Let's get to know these monsters!

This dinosaur was a contemporary of the Tyrannosaurus rex and closely resembled it. However, judging by the remains found, it was much, much larger. Their metabolism, according to scientists, was something between the metabolism of mammals and reptiles, which allowed them to reach such impressive sizes. They were predators, running at a speed of 14 meters per second and hunting smaller dinosaurs, most notably long-necked sauropods and their babies, by grabbing them with their huge jaws. And, according to paleontologists, they ate everything in their path.

Living in the Cretaceous period, the utaraptors were like miniature t-rex, but were distinguished by their strength and outstanding aggressiveness even by the standards of dinosaurs. In addition, they were distinguished by their extraordinary dexterity - they could jump at once a dozen meters in length and more than four meters in height. With forty-centimeter claws on their hind legs, they clung to the back of prey. Scientists suspect that they hunted in groups; if so, it would have cost them nothing to overwhelm a dinosaur much larger than themselves.

Larger than tyrannosaurs (at least nine meters, not counting a three-meter tail!), These predators of the Late Cretaceous period were almost completely invulnerable. Reinforced skull bones, crowned with powerful horns, did not leave the slightest chance of attacking him from the front. What is most surprising is that, being really huge, carnotaurs were also one of the fastest dinosaurs of their era. No one will hide from such a lizard!

Formally, these predatory marine reptiles were not dinosaurs, but, as contemporaries and competitors of the ancient lizards, they cannot be ignored in the general row. These sea giants grew up to 17 meters, and 10% of their size was occupied by the head - more precisely, elongated jaws full of sharp teeth. Previously, scientists believed that they moved quite slowly, wriggling with their whole body, like sea snakes. But detailed studies of the tails of the mosasaurs allowed them to come to the conclusion: in fact, these marine predators moved dexterously and quickly, like sharks, and grabbed prey in one lightning movement. Well, anyone could become prey.

One of the largest and most aggressive predators, the spinosaurus had a kind of sail on its back, which made it look twice as large and terrible. But the main horror he caused in the victims was not this, but his ability to quickly move both on land and on water. There was no escape from Spinosaurus! It ran at about 25 km / h and weighed more than a Tyrannosaurus and Gigantosaurus combined. A truly creepy thing!

In addition to a great set of teeth, this dinosaur, according to scientists, had good social skills. Paleontologists suggest that these dinosaurs lived in groups and did not show aggression towards their species. All the rest, these strong and fast predators, who could run at a speed of 30 km / h, ate with pleasure. Herbivores and carnivorous dinosaurs, not only small, but also large enough, became their prey. They themselves were not much different in size from tyrannosaurs, but their ability to hunt in a group made them even more dangerous.

Tyranotitan was a relative of the Gigantosaurus, and differed from him in only a few features. He had more powerful teeth, longer forelimbs, and a more squat build. This sturdy man ran faster than a Tyrannosaurus, moreover, paleontologists suggest, he knew how to swim. Yes, there is something to be afraid of!

These monsters were markedly different from their relatives. For starters, instead of three fingers, like the vast majority of dinosaurs, they boasted four. But the main thing was the claws on the front paws. They reached almost a meter in length! Theresinosaurus itself grew, on average, up to 10 meters. Judging by their size, it is unlikely that many living creatures of their day would like to meet them on a narrow path!

One look at uh
that thing is enough to flinch in horror. A giant bat 10 meters tall, equipped with a long neck and a powerful beak - this can only be dreamed of in nightmares. But the quetzalcoatl also flew as well as a bat! With a wingspan of up to 50 meters, it is considered the largest flying creature known to science. They hunted fish and small terrestrial creatures, paleontologists believe, and did not compete with large terrestrial predators, but this does not make their appearance less nightmarish.

This giant marine predator is a real monster! Its length reached 30 meters, and when it opened its mouth, it swung open no less than three meters! He can easily eat anyone in his path, and no wonder: the largest prey was about half his size. None of the marine life could feel safe. Anthropologists suspect that megalodons were the kings of the ocean: their remains are found all over the Earth, from North America to India.

Albertosaurus is one of the ancestors of the tyrannosaurus, and in many ways it is imperfect than the descendant. His skull bones are thinner, and the bite is weaker. But he also had advantages, and very frightening ones. First, thanks to the bacteria specific to this dinosaur species, its bite was poisonous to any victim, except for its fellow tribesmen. And secondly, he could rush after prey at a speed of 60 km / h - no worse than a car!

This dinosaur, originally from India, is still not very well known to scientists: its remains have been found only in fragments. However, it is known that in size and general appearance it resembled a tee-rex, but, most likely, it was heavier and more dense in build. If so, the earth should have trembled from his footsteps, and foliage from the trees should have fallen from his roar. At the very thought of such a creature, it becomes somehow uncomfortable.

Ldin is one of the few dinosaurs that scientists know for certain that they were covered with dense feathers or fur. The rest of the yutirannus resembled a t-rex: nine meters in length, full mouth of teeth and a willingness to devour anyone in its path. Here are just a shaggy skin ... Brrrr!

Another relative of the tyrannosaurus, who managed to surpass him in strength and fury. Acrocantosaurus in many ways resembled a t-rex, only that frail front handles were only suitable for picking teeth, while in acrocantosaurus they were a full-fledged hunting tool with which he grabbed and tore apart prey. This allowed him to hunt dinosaurs no less large than himself - and emerge victorious from the fight.

When dinosaur bones were found in bags in the USA and Canada, in Russia they could not boast of at least one or two vertebrae of ancient animals. The fact is that during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, the territory of present-day Russia was flooded with shallow seas. Dinosaurs lived here too, but finding their remains turned out to be more difficult - water and stones ground their bones into dust. Skeletons survived in swamps and volcanic ash, but glaciers drilled the earth into mush, and glacial waters eroded what was left. But Russian scientists have adapted to such difficult conditions. Now scattered dinosaur bones are found in the Far East and in the Moscow region. Pavel Skuchas, a candidate of biological sciences, a specialist in Mesozoic vertebrates, an associate professor at St. Petersburg State University, is professionally engaged in this. Pavel described a new genus of giant dinosaurs - Tengrisaurs, and then a new dinosaur - Siberotitan, which roamed the territory of modern Russia 120 million years ago. Agatha Korovina talked with Pavel about what kind of dinosaurs we eat for dinner, what Mickey Mouse and amphibians have in common, how humans will change in the future, and whether we will ever be able to graze a dinosaur in the backyard.

If a paleontologist walks through the forest with a girl who is not a paleontologist, what does he see, what will he tell her, given his professional deformation?

If a girl is a biologist, then you can afford a lot ... Dinosaurs have a striking feature - their legs are located under the body, slender, while a lizard, for example, has everything sticking out from the side, she waddles about. And you can compliment the girl: "You have legs like a dinosaur." The barefoot will kick in the face, and the savvy will be glad that a good pair, sagittal stance of the limbs.

- And around? We see forest belts, cramps, cliffs, but what do you see?

The brain reacts to careers, especially when you are on the train. Immediately remember the geological map, the age of the rocks. Sometimes paleontologists jump off the train, run and find interesting things. And the second moment, when you come from an expedition, it is very good to look for mushrooms later. It's easier than bones. Because bones are sometimes one centimeter, teeth one and a half to two millimeters.

- What kind of superpower? How do you find them?

There is a special approach. Bone-bearing rock is being collected, ideally some kind of sand, sandstone. A small handful is thrown into a sieve, and you begin to rinse it gently in water. Small grains of sand, turbidity float away, stones and bones remain. And this is where you start choosing. When the eye is trained, one and a half to two millimeters of a tooth is normal, you see. To find something from the Jurassic period, eyes alone are no longer enough. What remains in the sieve is dried, and then we examine it under a microscope.

- You have restored Tengrisaurus along several vertebrae. How is this possible?

Reconstruction of the appearance of fossil organisms based on scarce remains, for example, along two vertebrae, is very approximate. The closest relatives of this dinosaur, for which a whole skeleton is known, are revealed. One can understand whether the dinosaur was 10-12 meters, as in the case of our Siberian dinosaurs sauropod, or it was a giant. Scientists are guided by published articles. Sometimes more than one hundred or two hundred signs are used to clarify family ties.

- But the difference will still be: different jaw, different muscles ...

Indeed, therefore, any reconstruction from an incomplete skeleton is a convention and an assumption.

When paleontologists describe isolated bones in their work, they do not reconstruct their appearance. This is already the prerogative of people who are interested in paleontology.

It is great that several remarkable paleo-illustrators and paleoartists have appeared in Russia. One of them, for example, Andrey Atuchin.

The voice of some dinosaurs has been reconstructed. There is a group of dinosaurs that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period, they are called duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs. They were herbivores, quite peaceful, albeit large, 5–6 meters, walked on their hind legs, and the males had hollow ridges on their heads that connected with the nasopharynx. The idea arose that it was a resonator. We created a model, blew, and we got some kind of sound. This is hardly a perfect match, because soft tissues have to be taken into account, but still we roughly understand how the dinosaurs screamed.

- Why did these three vertebrae remain with the rest of the skeleton?

Fossils, especially those of the Mesozoic age, have often been preserved under very specific conditions. Usually this is a body of water: lake, river, sea. There is a current in the river, so skeletons in river sediments are usually not preserved, they are carried away by water, they begin to fall apart, and isolated remains are found here.

The desert is ideal for a paleontologist. We worked in Uzbekistan, there are wonderful outcrops of ancient rocks, and dinosaur bones can be collected like mushrooms.

We have forests. You can find something on the banks of the rivers where the cliff is forming, or in active or abandoned quarries. For example, coal is mined, and on top are layers containing the remains of dinosaurs. This also happens.

When I spoke with, they said that they describe their findings, take pictures, sketch, and make computer models - because they do not know what will be important later, because they may be missing something now. Do you have something that you are not sure about, but you just save it?

Of course, this is especially true with isolated residues. There are still bones, we do not understand whose they are. In the Krasnoyarsk Territory, very small vertebrae were found with processes in the form of a lancet, a rhombus - there is nothing similar in the modern fauna. We can't even define a group. We only understand that this is a kind of reptile. I showed at conferences: "Colleagues, please, what is this?" (this is a normal practice when the paleontologist does not understand anything at all). And so far no one has said anything. But we published an article, and when, for example, in the UK they find the skeleton of an animal with the same processes on the vertebrae, they will immediately remember our find, and the problem will be solved. If you cannot solve some problem, set this problem to everyone - let everyone think.

- Where can you find dinosaur bones in Russia?

Can be enumerated on the fingers of one hand. A unique place is the Chebulinsky district in the Kemerovo region. There are many river deposits, and there is the Shestakovo site, where whole skeletons have been preserved. Other places are the outskirts of the city of Blagoveshchensk in the Far East, the south of the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Chita Region. The bones in Shestakovo are very fragile.

Even if you find a skeleton and start picking with your finger, everything will quickly fall apart. Specialists had to impregnate each bone with a special glue. The skeleton is not pulled out of the rock, the rock is coated with gypsum and hammered with boards, this is called "taking a monolith", and taken to the laboratory, where it is then cleared.

- How did it happen that dinosaur bones are in Great Britain, in the Chebulinsky region, and in Antarctica?

The configuration of the continents is constantly changing. When the dawn of the dinosaurs began, the Jurassic period, all continents were united into a single supercontinent - Pangea. And the composition of the faunas in different parts of the globe was very similar. The fauna of Great Britain in the mid-Jurassic period and Western Siberia are almost identical, and these are long distances. Then Pangea split into the northern continent - Laurasia, which included Europe, Asia and North America, and Gondwana - a group of southern continents. Strange creatures have always lived in Gondwana. They penetrated there from Laurasia and evolved there completely independently of other regions.

- What is the specificity of our "Russian" dinosaur? How is it different from the rest?

He does not differ much from others. But he is very evolutionarily advanced, that is, these are already complex sauropods. Giant dinosaurs sauropods outwardly, when viewed from afar, are about all the same type: long neck and tail, four legs, large size, and then there are some variations: for example, how the teeth were arranged, in primitive ones they are in the form of spoons, that is, with an extension, so that bite off branches, for more advanced ones - in the form of pencils. Ours has something in between spoons and pencils.

- There was no protection?

When you are 10-12 meters, no one is afraid of you. The main task of the sauropod is to grow to this size as quickly as possible. There were sauropods under 30 meters, while predators usually grew up to seven meters.

- Why didn't predators evolve to superpredators?

This is very disadvantageous. And 20-meter predators never existed. There was apparently enough vegetation to feed even giants like the sauropod. Predators always have a problem - they need to hunt. Hunting is a big waste of energy. The larger the predator, the more meat it needs.

Predators are very vulnerable, it can be seen even in modern lions and tigers. For example, if a Tyrannosaurus rex breaks his leg when attacking a victim, that’s all, this is death, because he will no longer be able to eat.

It is extremely difficult to be a very large predator. Even Tyrannosaurus Rex would hardly have climbed the giant sauropod, because he understood that the cost of error is very high. Plus some other life experience, because dinosaurs were clearly no stupider than birds.

- Which dinosaur survived to this day?

Only birds. Crocodiles are the modern cousins ​​of dinosaurs. Both those and others belong to the group of archosaurs. "Archo" is the "highest", archosaurs are the highest lizards.

But by the behavior of modern birds and crocodiles, one can understand how dinosaurs behaved. There is even such a method - bracketing. If crocodiles have complex behavior - caring for offspring, demonstration during the mating season, if birds have it, then dinosaurs also had it.

In Mongolia, they even found a dinosaur in a brooding position.

- When you eat grilled chicken, do you think you are eating a dinosaur?

I used to think. Earlier, even with children who are interested in paleontology, we had a separate lesson on dinosaur anatomy, where we ate grilled kuru. Yes, indeed, one to one, not much has changed.

- There was a period when birds of prey could carry away a horse. What kind of time is this?

This is the beginning of the Cenozoic era. Before this was the end of the Cretaceous period, most dinosaurs are becoming extinct, with the exception of birds. The niche of large flightless running predators is empty. Mammals, it seems, have been in some kind of awesomeness for several million years - where are these predatory guys? They continued to be small enough. But large, flightless birds of prey and large crocodiles appeared. Those birds have reduced wings, they themselves are about two meters tall. They looked a little like an ostrich: powerful legs, small wings, only a half-meter beak. And the horse was about the size of a dog. With a blow of its beak, a bird could kill this horse instantly. But then the mammals woke up, and predators also appeared among them.

- And what the horses were carried away - is it established by the scratches on the bones or is this an assumption?

This is an assumption. When a paleontologist reconstructs the fauna, he looks who was a herbivore, who was a predator, identifies the most fearsome predator, apex predator, top predator. Apex predators usually eat everyone. Take the great white shark - what it sees is what it will eat. In the taiga, bears are the top predator of spring. A hungry large male will devour another male, a smaller one, both a man and a wild boar.

- Can you then explain why the dinosaurs have shrunk so much?

It's partly a myth that all dinosaurs were large. Dinosaurs occupied different niches. And there were so many small dinosaurs. When you are small, you can run and catch up with insects. This is your niche, you are an insect hunter. The bigger you are, the more vulnerable you are. An absolutely brilliant step is to master flight. When dinosaurs learned to fly, they had a chance to survive - you can fly if the conditions are unfavorable here.

- What other evolutionary gadgets helped ancient animals to occupy new niches?

Preservation of children's, larval traits in an adult state. This is called pedomorphosis. The second option, when the larva begins to reproduce, is neoteny. This is an absolutely ingenious thing, it is characteristic of tailed amphibians. There is also such a thing as optional neoteny. For example, the ambistoma larva (), very beautiful, with external gills, in the reservoir of South America faces a life dilemma: to go ashore or not. If there is a lot of food - a lot and good - why go through metamorphosis? And it remains a larva, begins to multiply. The second way - the reservoir dries up, there is little food, which means that you go through metamorphosis and become a land salamander.

The inhibition of a developmental program, the acquisition and consolidation of childish traits is generally a very frequent evolutionary background. For example, we are with you - we have a lot of pedomorphic features. Even if we go to the mirror, we will look at ourselves - typical childish features: large eyes, an unstretched muzzle.

Quite right. There may be various reasons why the program is inhibited. A common case when a part of the body becomes pedomorphic, and some, on the contrary, is superdeveloped. For example, in burrowing frogs, a very powerful skull suddenly begins to form, while the rest of the body remains semi-cartilaginous. Both Mickey Mouse and the female characters in the anime are pedomorphic. The latter have big eyes, breasts of a very serious size, the result is a mixture: hyperdeveloped breasts with a completely childish head.

There are a lot of such mixes. It is even believed that humans, dinosaurs, vertebrates in general, originated through pedomorphosis. Our type is chordate. Our relatives are tunicates. Tunicates have a larva with a tail and a sedentary stage. And now let's imagine: the sessile stage is lost, the larva begins to reproduce, and thus, most likely, “protofish” appeared. But then the "protofish" got jaws, and they became fish, the fish came out on land, reptiles emerged from the amphibians, which broke away from the water, and then it came to the dinosaur and man.

I heard a crazy theory that aliens are people from the future who have changed. They have huge eyes in order to receive more visual information, a small mouth, since conversation will cease to play an important role, just a couple of fingers, since in the world of computers this is not particularly necessary, etc. Do you think it is possible to transform into this?

Is that possible. There was a wonderful paleontologist - Aleksey Petrovich Bystrov, he participated in the formation of the St. Petersburg school of paleontologists, and in the 60s he wrote the book "The past, present, future of man." Alexey Petrovich was one of the first to dream up what the people of the future would look like. But his fantasies had a serious scientific basis. He was not only a paleontologist, but also a military doctor. And during the war, several thousand human skulls passed through his hands. He tried to find out what is no longer working for a person, which is a rudiment.

According to Bystrov, in a few thousand years a person will be small in stature, with a small number of teeth - wisdom teeth will disappear in the first place - with a large head, since a lot of information will have to be processed.

Perhaps the fingers will become smaller, and the eyes will enlarge. Why waste the body's energy on the development of the senses, if you can perceive all the information visually and you feel good?

- Can't we learn to regenerate? After all, amphibians regenerated legs, brain regions, and eyes.

This is from the realm of fantasy. Salamanders and some other amphibians could indeed regenerate. But as soon as they moved to land, complicated the structure of the body, they lost the ability to regenerate. This is some kind of evolutionary fee. Dinosaurs began to bite off pieces of each other, and nothing grew out of them.

Some scientists are trying to revive mammoths, trying to do it with mice. Is it possible to revive dinosaurs based on some remnants, for example, with the help of chickens?

If you had asked this five years ago, I would have said that it is absolutely impossible. Now I say that it is 98-99% impossible. Why? First, in order to reconstruct something, you need DNA. Only fragments of DNA remain in frozen mammoths. Even this has not yet been technically resolved. When a mammoth is restored with the help of mice or elephants, let molecular biologists think, it will be a breakthrough. Although I don’t understand why. Well, it's probably fun to have a homemade hairy mammoth in your backyard.

About dinosaurs.

Previously, it was believed that nothing organic and complex molecular from dinosaurs remains. Then they did an ingenious research: they dissolved the bone of a tyrannosaur, and it turned out that something was preserved there. But this is not DNA, these are collagen proteins, these are structural molecules that are found in bones.

But this is already a great progress. Since something molecular is preserved, maybe we will find something else under certain conditions. There is a minimum probability.

Now the last word of technology in paleontology is the use of the synchrotron. It can be used to study the detailed structure of bones. At one of the conferences we were given special glasses and said: "And now we will fly through the cavities inside this bone." And so we flew. This is a completely different level.

- Would you like to own a house dinosaur?

No, I wouldn't want a house dinosaur. It would be more interesting for me to see how it really was. This is not a pile of stones for us, in fact, these are living creatures. We can assume how they evolved, assume that this dinosaur hunted in a pack, but this is all speculation. So we assumed that our Tengrisaur was 10-12 meters. I would like to know - is it true? And to see some details that we cannot even imagine.

Dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrates that inhabited all ecosystems on planet Earth for over 160 million years, from the Triassic period (about 230 million years ago) to the end of the Cretaceous period (about 65 million years ago). I want to share with you a list of the ten most ferocious marine dinosaurs.

10. Shastazaurus

Shastasaurus is a genus of dinosaurs that lived at the end of the Triassic period (more than 200 million years ago) in the territory of modern North America and, possibly, China. His remains have been found in California, British Columbia and the Chinese province of Guizhou. This predator is the largest marine reptile ever found on the planet. It could grow up to 21 meters in length and weigh 20 tons.

9. Dacosaurus

In ninth place in the ranking is Dakosaurus - a saltwater crocodile that lived in the Late Jurassic - Early Cretaceous period (more than 100.5 million years ago). It was a fairly large, carnivorous animal, adapted almost exclusively to hunting large prey. Could grow up to 6 meters in length.

8. Thalassomedon

Thalassomedon is a genus of dinosaurs that lived in North America about 95 million years ago. Most likely, he was the main predator of his time. Thalassomedon grew up to 12.3 m in length. The size of his fin was about 1.5–2 meters. The length of the skull was 47 centimeters, the length of the teeth was 5 cm. He ate fish.

7. Notosaurus

Notosaurus (Nothosaurus) is a sea lizard that lived 240-210 million years ago in the territory of modern Russia, Israel, China and North Africa. In length it reached about 4 meters. He had webbed limbs, with five long toes that could be used both for movement on land and for swimming. Probably ate fish. The complete skeleton of a Notosaurus can be seen at the Natural History Museum in Berlin.

6. Tylosaurus

In sixth place in the list of the most ferocious marine dinosaurs is Tylosaurus - a large marine predatory lizard that inhabited the oceans at the end of the Cretaceous (about 88-78 million years ago). He was the dominant marine predator of his time. It grew up to 14 m in length. It ate fish, large predatory sharks, small mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and waterfowl.

5. Talattoarchon

Thalattoarchon is a large marine reptile that lived more than 245 million years ago in what is now the western United States. The remains, consisting of parts of the skull, spine, pelvic bones, and parts of the hind fins, were discovered in Nevada in 2010. According to estimates, talattoarchon was the apex predator of his time. He grew at least 8.6 m in length.

4. Tanystropheus

Tanystropheus is a genus of lizard-like reptiles that lived in the Middle Triassic about 230 million years ago. It grew up to 6 meters long, and was distinguished by a very elongated and mobile neck, which reached 3.5 m. It was a predatory aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyle, probably hunting fish and cephalopods near the coast.

3. Liopleurodon

Liopleurodon is a genus of large carnivorous marine reptiles that lived at the turn of the Middle and Late Jurassic (approximately 165 million to 155 million years ago). It is believed that the largest known lyopleurodon was just over 10 m in length, but typical sizes for it range from 5 to 7 m (according to other sources, 16-20 meters). Body weight is estimated at 1-1.7 tons. These apex predators likely hunted in ambush, attacking large cephalopods, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, sharks and other large animals that could be caught.

2. Mosasaurus

Mosasaurus is a genus of extinct reptiles that lived on the territory of modern Western Europe and North America during the Late Cretaceous - 70–65 million years ago. Their remains were first found in 1764 near the Meuse River. The total length of representatives of this genus ranged from 10 to 17.5 m. In appearance they resembled a mixture of fish (or whale) with a crocodile. All the time they were in the water, plunging to a considerable depth. They ate fish, cephalopods, turtles and ammonites. According to some scientists, these predators are distant relatives of modern monitor lizards and iguanas.

1. Megalodon

Megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon) is an extinct species of prehistoric shark that lived throughout the oceans 28.1-3 million years ago. It is the largest known predatory fish in history. The megalodon was estimated to be 18 meters long and weigh 60 tons. In body shape and behavior, it was similar to a modern white shark. He hunted cetaceans and other large marine animals. Interestingly, some cryptozoologists claim that this animal could have survived to this day, however, apart from the huge teeth found (up to 15 cm in length), there is no other evidence that the shark still lives somewhere in the ocean.

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Do you want to know what kinds of dinosaurs have learned to swim underwater?

Most of the huge swimming monsters we know of are called marine reptiles, not dinosaurs. These huge creatures lived in the seas and oceans at the same time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

The most famous marine predator is Spinosaurus.

It was the largest marine predatory dinosaur we know of. Scientists think he could have lived both on land and in water. He could submerge and swim, as his limbs were webbed in the shape of the fins of modern drivers. He probably hunted sharks and big fish.

Spinosaurus is the only dinosaur we have learned about spending most of its life in water. Another marine dinosaur, Ceratosaurus, could probably swim and hunt crocodiles and large fish underwater.

Swimming reptiles

Spinosaurus wasn't the only large dinosaur living in water!

The sea was teeming with large and ferocious reptiles of all shapes and sizes. Here are a few of them:

Notosaurus Nobu Tamura

The first large ocean reptiles were the Nechosaurs, which means "false reptile". They lived during the Triassic period, probably living a lifestyle similar to that of modern seals. There are about a dozen different species, but the most famous of these is Nothosaurus. This animal was about 4 meters (13 feet) long, with long, webbed toes and possibly a tail.

These reptiles were replaced by plesiosaurs, which appeared in the early Jurassic period. Most of them had long necks and small heads, ranging in size from 2.5 meters (8 feet) to 14 meters (46 feet) in length.

Pliosaurus

The largest of these was Pliosaurus. This animal had teeth over 30 centimeters (12 inches) long, and its jaw pressure was four times more powerful than that of Tyrannosaurus Rex. Its length is 15 meters (49 feet).

Another underwater plesiosaur is the long-eyed Elamosaurus.

Elamosaurus

It had four fins and was about 14 meters (46 feet) long. He was a very slow swimmer and probably hunted down large schools of fish while hunting.

Their necks were so long that they could not raise their heads above the water.

Why didn't all dinosaurs know how to swim?

The word dinosaur has a very specific meaning.

Science uses the term "dinosaur" to describe a certain type of creature (eg, Spinosaurus), but this name does not include marine reptiles or so-called "flying dinosaurs".

One of the reasons for the different classification is the different appearance of their limbs. Dinosaurs had limbs that were located on the abdominal part of their bodies, and marine reptiles had limbs that grew on the sides.