A Yale team ran 11,000 fossil measurements through machine learning, borrowing a WWII radar trick, to conclude the giant predator was highly aquatic. Published October 2026, it reopens a fight that began in 1912.
The October 25, 2026 report on a Yale study in Current Biology that used machine learning on fossil limb proportions to recover 'highly aquatic habits' for Spinosaurus.
Longer than T. rex, with a sail on its back and a crocodile-like snout. Meet the river monster at the center of the fight.
Ernst Stromer described Spinosaurus from Egyptian fossils in 1915. The only specimens were destroyed in a 1944 Allied air raid on Munich.
PBS Eons traces how a dinosaur known only from lost bones and sketches became the first serious candidate for a swimming predator.
Nizar Ibrahim's team recovered a near-complete tail with tall spines that worked like an oar, the first hard evidence a dinosaur could swim.
Robotic models of the fin-tail showed it generated more than eight times the thrust of a land predator's tail, fueling the aquatic case.
Wader or diver? PBS Eons lays out why specialists still clash over whether Spinosaurus pursued prey underwater or fished from the shallows.