What is the Deal with these Spinosaurs?

[00:00:00]Spinosauriday is without a doubt one of the most popular dinosaur groups out there. I mean, it contains some really cool dinosaurs like Baryionx, Sukamimus, Irritator, and of course the heavy hitter itself, Spinosaurus, who happens to be my all-time favorite dinosaur.

[00:00:16]Like such a cool such a cool creature, you know. However, it certainly must be stated that this group is incredibly frustrating. And one of the reasons why it's so frustrating is because Spinosaurids have a tendency to be incredibly fragmentaryary, barring a few exceptions. Most species that we find are based off of very few scattered fossils, which obviously doesn't offer a lot of insight about that specific animal, which then makes it so that this whole family is pretty mysterious. They have relatively mysterious origins. They and they have relatively mysterious lifestyles. Like there's still a lot of debates going on about the exact lifestyle of Spinosaurus, for example.

[00:00:58]Like was it a heron-like dinosaur or was it a swimming dinosaur? And even though we do have a decent amount of evidence, we still do need more data, especially for the entirety of the family. But this cannot be emphasized anymore than with two specific Spinosaurids that I have in mind right now. Those are Oshellayia and Ostapricosaurus.

[00:01:19]two dinosaurs that have been gaining a lot of popularity in recent memory. I don't know why, but they just they certainly have been. And I'm not saying that you're not allowed to like these dinosaurs. You can like any dinosaur you want. You know, I'm completely fine with that. I just think it's interesting because these are extremely fragmentaryary Spinosaurids. Oallayia is only known from some pieces of its skull. Ostrichaurus is only known from teeth. And again, you can still very much like these dinosaurs. You know, that is completely up to you. In fact, one of my favorite spinosaurids is serratos sucop. And it is an extremely fragmentaryary Spinosaurid. It's truly unfortunate, but still, it must be said that these guys are some of the most frustrating spinosaurids out there because of how fragmentaryary they are.

[00:02:05]Uh, you know, they don't offer too much insight about the family as a whole. And they especially, like the fossils we have especially don't offer a lot of insight about the actual animals that they went to. But oddly enough, I oftentimes see people talking about these dinosaurs like we know a lot about them. This has especially been coming up a lot since the reveal of Spinosaurus in the end of Oak Street. Like now we know that at the very least a Spinosaurid is going to be in that movie, which you know could have some interesting implications because if this movie takes place in the Jurassic period, then you have a Spinosaurid in the Jurassic. Now, first of all, every time there's a Spinosaurus that's appearing in a movie, I oftentimes see people stating something like, "Oh, it could be Oshallayia," which is always a very interesting statement because like I mentioned earlier, Oshallayia is known from incredibly fragmentaryary remains.

[00:02:55]We don't really know much about Oshalia.

[00:02:58]We don't even really know what it looked like. But a lot of people think that we do know what it looked like. And the reason being is because artists have, you know, recreated the animal and they often times make it look like this. It kind of just looks like Spinosaurus in the art. One of the reasons why that's done is because Oshalia was often considered to be extremely closely related to Spinosaurus. And so using phlogenetic bracketing, you would kind of like fill in a lot of the gaps that you have on one animal with another animal that's a little bit more complete. Thereby, you get an animal that looks a lot more like Spinosaurus.

[00:03:33]But it is very important to note that there's even a lot of debate going on around uh the classification of Oshallayia. There are some researchers who consider Oshallayia to simply be another species of Spinosaurus. There's even some researchers who believe that this is simply just a junior synonym of Spinosaurus Egypticus, which would imply that Egypticus had a wider range than we previously thought. I mean, as it currently stands, it does seem like the pallet of Oshallayia is distinct enough from Spinosaurus for it to be considered its own genus. But it's just really important to note that there's still a lot of mystery with this animal. And we don't know for sure what this animal looked like. We don't even know if it had a sail. And if it did, we don't know how large it would be. Like honestly, it might be a little bit more likely that the sail was a little bit more reduced.

[00:04:20]Kind of similar to something like sucaminus because it seems like those types of uh tall neurospines are a bit more common on Spinosaurids, at least the ones that we found evidence for that. Again, fragmentaryary dinosaurs.

[00:04:32]But that's happened a lot. When Walking with Dinosaurs revealed their Spinosaurus in uh you know in the trailers, I got people commenting saying it kind of looks a little bit more like Oshaliah to me, which again I didn't I didn't understand that because we just don't we just don't know what Oshallayia looks like. Uh the same goes for the Spinosauruses that appeared in Rebirth.

[00:04:52]Some people said that they think it might be Oshallayia instead of Spinosaurus. Again, I don't know how we got to that conclusion. And now, of course, it's happening to the end of Oak Street. Uh, but it's not as frequent this time for the end of Oak Street.

[00:05:05]Really, the most frequent comparison has been with Osta Freakosaurus, which there is like I do see the logic in this one because that's operating under the assumption that the end of Oak Street takes place in the Jurassic period. If it takes place in the Jurassic period, then it might make sense to see a Jurassic Spinosaur. And Ostapricosaurus might be a Jurassic Spinosaur.

[00:05:30]emphasis on the might because again like I said it's only known from some teeth uh and those teeth don't tell us a lot about the animal. It is never really ideal to describe a whole genus off of teeth alone. I mean just look at the mess that was trodon for several years.

[00:05:50]Uh Ostrocosaurus is the exact same way.

[00:05:53]Now, the teeth in question do resemble Spinosaurid teeth, but it is it has also been mentioned that they might also be seratosaur teeth. So, we just don't know. Ideally, what you want are pieces of the skeleton and more pieces that are, you know, a lot more diagnostic of the Spinosaurid family. Uh it's really unfortunate that Ostapricosaurus is as fragmentaryary as it is because it could represent something that's that could offer some answers for this family. Uh because like I mentioned it is an animal that lived in the Jurassic period. It also lived in uh Tanzania uh which would also have some pretty interesting implications. Now the reason why that would offer a lot of good insight is because we don't really have any Jurassic Spinosaurs as of at the moment.

[00:06:39]Now, evolutionary models do predict that Spinosaur Day saw its start in the Jurassic period. That's when they branched off of the group known as Megalosauroidia. That's right.

[00:06:48]Spinosaurs are Megalosaurus. I wonder how many of you knew that, but that's what we predict. We don't have actual fossils that show that Ostrocosaurus is potentially a dinosaur that shows a Spinosaurid that lived in the Jurassic period. And if Ostroasaurus is a Spinosaurid, that would show us that Spinosauriday might have seen its start in Africa as opposed to Europe, which would also be pretty interesting. But to to keep bringing up the same thing, to keep bringing up the past essentially, we don't know if Ostapricosaurus was a Spinosaurid or not. This is a controversial genus, and we simply just need more fossils before we can say with absolute certainty. Now, like I mentioned before, there are some people who have commented that the Spinosaurid we see in the end of Oak Street is Ostrocosaurus. Now, it could be maybe the filmmakers decided to go that route.

[00:07:44]Maybe they heard about like maybe they wanted a Spinosaurid in their movie and so they decided to look for any potential Jurassic Spinosaurids and they found Ostapricosaurus and they decided to put it in their movie. That is very much a possibility, but I think it's kind of unlikely because first of all, the Spinosaurid we see in the end of Oak Street actually looks a lot like Spinosaurus, like a traditional Spinosaurus reconstruction. It seems to have proportionally short hind limbs. It has a huge sail, which is as of right now mainly unique to Spinosaurus, and it has a Spinosaurus-shaped skull. All things that point to it being a Spinosaurus. Plus, Spinosaurus is just the most famous uh, you know, member of the family. It's actually one of the most famous dinosaurs, period. I think we're reaching a point in human history where it's like Spinosaurus is just going to start showing up in practically everything because that's a good thing to get butts and seats, you know, to so to speak, I guess. And if we want to look at it a little bit more accurately as well, assuming that Ostrocosaurus is a Spinosaurid, it it wouldn't look like a Spinosaurus like it's very unlikely that it would because Ostrocosaurus would be the oldest known Spinosaurid as in it, you know, it dates all the way back to the Jurassic period. It would be closer in time to the split from the rest of Megalosauroidia.

[00:09:04]uh which means that it would have probably a more basil spinosaurid traits like it might not have much of a sail for example. Maybe it would have tall narrow spines but you know it might not have anything too crazy. Megalosauroids already kind of had long snouts so ostafricosaurus probably still had that but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a bit more blocky like uh earlier megalosaurs. But that's all just speculation because we just don't have enough skeletal material to say anything for sure. Uh it's just a very frustrating genus and a lot of people want me to talk about it, but I just don't have much to say about it because we just don't have enough. We don't have enough to assign to the genus to say anything with confidence. And so in my opinion, Oshallayia and Ostrocosaurus are like the most frustrating Spinosaurids. They're spinosaurids that are gaining a lot of popularity, but because of that, there's just a lot of uh like misunderstanding that's surrounding these dinosaurs. And also, don't get this video wrong. If you really like Ochalia and Ostafricosaurus, then you are absolutely allowed to do that. I am not against you having any dinosaur as a favorite. But I also think that that needs to come with the understanding that we just don't know enough about this dinosaur to really state anything with certainty. Uh, and we just need to be we just need to be patient and hope that one day we get to learn a little bit more about that animal and then we could start say saying things with a little bit more certainty when we bring them up. But that's pretty much all I have for this video. You know, I just wanted to talk about those two real quick because I've their names have been popping up quite a bit in my comments. Uh, as it usually, you know, they usually do in situations like this, so it's not to be it's not too surprising. Uh, but yeah, that's that's all I have for this one. Thank you so much for watching and have an awesome day.