In a study published in the open access journal PLOS ONE on March 6, 2024, Nathan Myhrvold of Intellectual Ventures and colleagues found that support for the spinosaurus hypothesis as an aquatic tracking predator may be fundamentally flawed. He said that there is a sex.
Although paleontologists generally agree that the famous spinosaurus was a fish-eater, how exactly these dinosaurs caught their prey is the subject of lively debate and remains unclear. Department researchers suggest they were hunting on the coast, and some say they were walking or swimming in shallow water. Others claimed that they were aquatic tracking predators. A recent study supported the latter hypothesis using a fairly new statistical method called phylogenetic flexible discriminant analysis (pFDA) to analyze bone density and proportions in Spinosaurus. In the current study, Myhrvold et al. critically evaluated the methods of previous research and identified important flaws.
This assessment identifies inconsistencies and biases in data selection and definitions of specific behavioral terms in previous studies. The researchers also found that the technique had low accuracy when applied to the dataset used in the study due to the small sample size and high variability in certain data. Myhrvold and colleagues believe there are enough problems with this methodology to invalidate the results of previous studies.
Although this new study does not aim to settle the debate over the lifestyle of spinosaurian dinosaurs, it does refute the conclusions of a previous paper that supported the underwater tracking predator hypothesis, and it does support this idea. The authors note that this is also contradicted by several other studies. The authors also provide guidelines for future studies, urge caution when applying pFDA to limited datasets, and note that there are limitations to the use of bone density to infer aquatic life in dinosaurs. It emphasizes that.
The authors further note that “Spinosaurus and its relatives are known for their unusual anatomical features, the rarity of specimens, and the fact that until very recently (2020) scientists had not discovered bones in any of their bodies. “The fact that it's made with meat makes it attractive and different from other meats,” he added. Eating dinosaurs means that there is strong evidence that Spinosaurus lived near water and ate fish and other aquatic life, which explains how Spinosaurus lived and sea lions. This has caused much controversy as to whether it was a fast-swimming predator that chased fish, or whether it was a wild predator. Did it ambush the predator by the water's edge and grab it with clawed hands like a giant version of a salmon-chasing brown bear, or did it stick its head in the water like a seven-ton heron from hell? Fabbri et al. attempted to solve lifestyle problems using statistics, but the statistical methods and data used turned out to be inaccurate and inappropriate. ”
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