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dinosaur research

What a New Study Says About Spinosaurus and Life Underwater

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No study has shown that Spinosaurus spent most of its life underwater. A 2024 analysis of skull shape instead found similarities to marine animals and wading birds, which its authors interpreted as support for stand-and-wait feeding on aquatic prey. That points to a possible feeding adaptation—not a measured share of time submerged or proof of underwater pursuit.

What the 2024 skull study found

Sean Smart and Manabu Sakamoto compared size-adjusted skull measurements across reptiles, birds and other sauropsids, using multivariate analysis to examine how skull form related to ecological setting. Spinosaurids, including Spinosaurus, fell away from other theropods and closer to marine animals and wading birds. The authors argued that this skull construction would better support waiting to ambush aquatic prey than other proposed feeding methods. Read the 2024 PeerJ study.

The result is about the shape of the skull and what it might be suited to do. It does not directly record where an individual animal spent its day, how often it entered water or how long it remained submerged.

What the measurements can—and cannot—say

The study’s figure includes 95 representative taxa. Its first two principal components account for 48.06% and 30.10% of the variation in the skull-morphology dataset, respectively. Those percentages describe how the measured skull traits vary in the analysis; they are not estimates of time underwater.

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The authors found terrestrial ecologies significantly distinct from both semi-aquatic and aquatic ecologies, but did not find a significant difference between the semi-aquatic and aquatic groups. They also concluded that dividing the animals into those three ecological categories did not fit the pattern well: the clusters seemed to reflect adaptations for feeding on aquatic versus terrestrial food. Naris position and rostral elongation—the placement of the nostrils and the length of the snout—had the greatest influence on categorization.

“Aquatic” can mean several different behaviors

Evidence that an animal could feed on aquatic prey does not by itself show that it was a diver or an underwater pursuit hunter. The competing descriptions refer to different behaviors, and should not be treated as interchangeable:

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  • Shoreline feeding: taking aquatic prey from the water’s edge.
  • Wading: entering shallow water to forage.
  • Surface swimming: moving through water without necessarily diving.
  • Submerged foraging: searching for prey below the surface.
  • Underwater pursuit: actively chasing prey while submerged.

The skull analysis most directly informs feeding adaptation. Its authors’ stand-and-wait interpretation does not establish the deeper behaviors in that list, much less how much of Spinosaurus’ life any of them occupied.

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Why researchers still disagree about its relationship with water

Different studies examine different evidence, including skull form, bone compactness, buoyancy, locomotion and fossil context. Those lines of evidence have produced competing interpretations rather than a single settled account of Spinosaurus’ ecology.

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Bone compactness and a 2024 critique

A 2024 PLOS ONE paper by Myhrvold and colleagues reexamined datasets and statistical assumptions behind a bone-compactness classification used to argue for subaqueous foraging. Its abstract reports problems with the exemplar datasets and low accuracy for the statistical method on those data. The authors explicitly said their study was not intended to determine Spinosaurus’ ecology, so it challenges a particular method rather than resolving the animal’s lifestyle. Read the PLOS ONE paper.

Coverage from the University of Chicago describes the disagreement: Nathan Myhrvold criticized the earlier statistical analysis, while Matteo Fabbri’s team maintained that its revised bone-density analysis supported submergence. These are the researchers’ positions, not a settled consensus. Read the University of Chicago report. Myhrvold’s assessment is quoted in a related report: “None of those requirements were met in that earlier study, so the results just didn’t hold up under reexamination.” Read the quoted report.

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Skeletal and environmental evidence

A 2022 eLife paper by Sereno and co-authors used skeletal reconstruction and biomechanical analysis to argue against specialized aquatic pursuit predation, describing Spinosaurus as semiaquatic. That conclusion is disputed by research supporting greater aquatic capability. Read the 2022 paper.

A 2025 study of oxygen isotopes in Spinosaurus tooth dentine explored high-resolution reconstruction of ancient environments and possible seasonal variation in environmental signals. Isotope evidence can inform environmental conditions; it is not a direct measure of the proportion of an animal’s life spent underwater. Read the 2025 isotope study.

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What readers can conclude

  • The 2024 skull study found a shape association with marine animals and wading birds and interpreted it as support for stand-and-wait feeding on aquatic prey.
  • It did not measure daily behavior or lifetime time spent underwater, and it did not demonstrate diving pursuit predation.
  • The bone-compactness critique questions a statistical classification method but expressly does not settle Spinosaurus ecology.
  • Claims about feeding, wading, swimming and underwater pursuit require distinctions between behaviors and between the evidence used to infer them.

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