Preserved Spinosaurus Embryo? Nope!

[suspsy]

This is . . . wow. I'm not yet sure if this is serious or a joke on the part of the author.

EDIT: Yes, he really is 100% serious, apparently. He truly believes this to be a preserved Spinosaurus embryo which proves the animal had a hump like a bison as opposed to a sail. He also believes Spinosaurus was more closely related to sauropods than other theropods.

Zounds.

https://petrifiedembryology.wordpress.com/petrified-embryology-volume-3-the-frozen-baby-dinosaurs-spinosaurus-dorsojuvencus/?fbclid=IwAR1Yjxg0QM-mZImvwAMszzUUeHFNlAFmyh43IgIVaFyQIYg4u5TPD7xOsCQ

[MLMjp]

I really don't know what to say.

Like, it looks serious, but that rock doesn't look anything like an embryo to me...and Suspsy talks like this is some kind of bad joke...But at the same time I find the reconstruction plausible, but I haven't read the whole thing...

I am gonna wait until other, more qualified people comment about this.

[SidB]

Once again, proposals and their related discoveries serve to act as a potential caution not to become too doctrinaire about our cherished ideas. Imagine if we have to revamp the latest Spinosaurus models yet again, at least in part. The thought of a closer connection to sauropodmorpha staggers me, to say the least.

[stargatedalek]

There are a few things to dissect here, but I want to preface further discussion by establishing that numerous people, myself included, have been suggesting Spinosaurus almost certainly had a muscular hump since long before even the 2014 material was publicly known. Please don't lump us or this reconstruction choice into this books Peters-ian photoshop themed gibberish.

Animals with sails have very different neural extensions from those with muscular humps, they are very narrow and further narrow towards the top. Chameleons, basilisks, pelycosaurs, etc. all share this fundamental shape. Spinosaurus, Hadrosaurs, and Ceratopsians do not. All of these groups have vertebrae extensions that are very wide, and widen further towards the top. A shape we only see in animals where these extensions are supporting musculature.

We've already been reconstructing ceratopsians with this musculature instead of giving them miniature sails running down their backs for a long time, and it's been gaining traction again in regards to hadrosaurs too.

There is no animal that has structures like Spinosaurus or Ouranosaurus and doesn't use them to support large amounts of muscle. There is no animals that has evolved these structures for display. There is no animal where these structures have atrophied into display structures. There is no analogue, alive or dead, that supports the idea of Spinosaurus having a thin sail.

The 2014 reconstruction was shown with neural spines that were wide but narrowed towards the top, something the authors claimed proved a thin sail. But this was shown to have been completely imagined when more material was later found! The tops of those vertebrae were entirely fabricated and not based on fossil remains.

Low and behold, looking at the new material we see every vertebrae that we actually have the top of widens at the top. And yet not only did they not update their life reconstructions to reflect this, conveniently refusing to mention it at all, but the vertebrae that were still inferred are still depicted with this strange shape that is completely unknown in analogues.

And Spinosaurus has a lot to benefit from muscular humps. It has a very long neck that isotope data shows us was held up and out of the water for a majority of the animals time, and it has a long tail used for propulsion with a body not designed to undulate. Both of these are features it makes sense to develop a muscular hump for, which is exactly what we see the bones lining up with.

Giving Spinosaurus a sail is not based on any anatomical feature of the animal. It's something that stems purely from centuries old tradition of depicting dinosaurs as beasts and leviathans of myth.

[Lanthanotus]

Thanks for linking, suspy.

Quite some work went into that article, though I can't say for sure if it's peer reviewed, which would be an obligatory thing to do in the scientific way. Also some x-ray image or so would certainly help to shed some light on the inner looks of that thing. I am no paleontologist but I've seen my share of fossils, embryos and skeletons and from the outside looks of it, I'd call it quite speculative.

[Dinoxels]

Can someone help summarize this? Is this even a real fossil?

[suspsy]

This is pure bunk written (very badly) by someone who has apparently deluded himself into believing that a rock is a dinosaur embryo.

[Carnoking]

This should be fun to hear more about.

[Dinoxels]

This is pure bunk written (very badly) by someone who has apparently deluded himself into believing that a rock is a dinosaur embryo.

I just read the entire thing and I agree. There is so many typos. When he outlines the "skull" he outlines a weird shape and points arrows at random things and calls them parts of the skull. He also supports the strange theory about Spinosaurus' tail from Scott Hartman.

[stargatedalek]

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that this was a real egg, as it does seems to show potential fragments of shell. But that he can supposedly find all of these specific features which really aren't obvious even with the diagrams is rather hard to buy. Could this be a Spinosaurus egg? Maybe, but even assuming it's a real egg I don't see enough evidence to suggest that.

And none of this explains the frankly outrageous claims about their ancestry. Deinocheirus and Gallimimus more primitive than Herrerasaurus, despite Deinocheirus having a pygostyle? Despite other ornithomimids having clear preservation not just of feathers but of wing feathers? Ceolophysis more primitive than Herrerasaurus for that matter? It reads like it's designed to appear "gotcha" without being based on anything of substance.

[Bread]

Once again, proposals and their related discoveries serve to act as a potential caution not to become too doctrinaire about our cherished ideas. Imagine if we have to revamp the latest Spinosaurus models yet again, at least in part. The thought of a closer connection to sauropodmorpha staggers me, to say the least.

My thoughts exactly. Although, I don't see this becoming as popular as the tail discovery and bipedal or quadrupedal debate.

I'd like to see another paper on this "fossil" and whether or not this proposal of Spinosaurus is revolutionary.

[Leyster]

This is . . . wow. I'm not yet sure if this is serious or a joke on the part of the author.

EDIT: Yes, he really is 100% serious, apparently. He truly believes this to be a preserved Spinosaurus embryo which proves the animal had a hump like a bison as opposed to a sail. He also believes Spinosaurus was more closely related to sauropods than other theropods.

Zounds.

https://petrifiedembryology.wordpress.com/petrified-embryology-volume-3-the-frozen-baby-dinosaurs-spinosaurus-dorsojuvencus/?fbclid=IwAR1Yjxg0QM-mZImvwAMszzUUeHFNlAFmyh43IgIVaFyQIYg4u5TPD7xOsCQ

Ah, yes. Rampant pareidolia. Peters is reliable, compared to this guy.

[Duna]

What a crap and lost of time ... Was it published on December 28th (Santos Inocentes Day, similar to April's fool)?

[Dinoxels]

What a crap and lost of time ... Was it published on December 28th (Santos Inocentes Day, similar to April's fool)?

It was on the 27th.

[Dusty Wren]

It wasn't really "published" at all. The website lists Smashwords as the publisher--they're an e-book distributor that will publish literally anything you upload, as long as it's not hate speech and you didn't obviously plagiarize someone. They don't even edit any of the text before publication.

[TethysaurusUK]

A friend of mine sent me this less than an hour ago. Apart from a good laugh, I do feel quite insulted when people think that their ignorance and straight-up lies are to be taken seriously. By the way, I have found an entire embryo assemblage in my back garden including 7 subspecies of Triceratops angilcus and 12 new genera of Brontosaurus, in the same horizon no less.

[Libraraptor]

Till here, I regard this rather as a bad satire on scientific work.

[Stegotyranno420]

I'm more curious why he thinks of his phylogenetic tree makes sense, but I don't even want to read, it's probably gonna hurt my eyes and have no good evidence

[Crackington]

Best to save your eyes @Stegotyranno - I tried to read it but it was far too much like that Peters pterosaur mythology guy for my liking, so gave up!

And yet, I think @stargatedalek has a point, there do appear to be some bits of egg shell in there and it does seem to be shaped like some dino eggs. I wish a real palaeontologist was able to properly look at it.