Was T.rex A Better Swimmer Than Spinosaurus?

Spinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus are two of the most famous and culturally influential megatheropods, with a fanboy rivalry dating back to 2001. One was a huge water-based predator from North Africa that feasted on fish the size of cars, and the other was an even bigger North American tyrant that took on living tanks. Our understanding of both species has changed dramatically since they were discovered, but Spinosaurus in particular has been the subject of back-and-forth drama regarding its ecological role. Was it a bipedal monster that took on other theropods? Was it a knee-deep wader? Or was it an aquatic pursuit predator that used its powerful tail to dive under the surface and hunt prey in the water column? A new study indicates that, at least in this respect, Spinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus had something in common: the way that they used water to hunt.

The idea that Spinosaurus and Tyrannosaurus both hunted in water may be a strange one, but ecological modeling and morphology based on biophysics seems to indicate that it may have happened.

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Fabbri et al. 2022: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35322229
Myrhvold et al. 2023 Preprint: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2023.05.04.539484v1.full.pdf
Blanco 2023: https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/198/1/202/7153107