Plate 003 · Scale drawing
How big was Spinosaurus?
The short answer: enormous. Up to 15 metres from snout to tail and around 7 tonnes, the longest meat-eating dinosaur ever discovered, drawn here to scale.
Snout to tail
about 49 feet
Body mass
older estimates up to 20 t
Skull length
dal Sasso et al., 2005
Longest predator known
ahead of T. rex
How Spinosaurus measures up
Set against the other great predators, and a person for scale, the sail-back stands alone on length.
Lengths are best-estimate midpoints. Spinosaurus is known from incomplete fossils, so figures vary between studies.
Spinosaurus vs T. rex
The longest predator against the most powerful biter. Tale of the tape.
Spinosaurus
T. rex
The verdict: Spinosaurus was longer, but T. rex was heavier, more muscular and bit far harder. On land, most palaeontologists back T. rex; in the water the advantage flips. And they never met, living tens of millions of years apart on different continents. Their only showdown was on screen, in Jurassic Park III.
See the full head-to-head
A fish-eater’s toolkit
Spinosaurus was a piscivore. Cretaceous North Africa teemed with car-sized fish, and it was built to catch them: conical, un-serrated teeth for gripping slippery prey, long narrow jaws that snapped shut with little resistance, and pressure receptors at the snout to sense movement in murky water.
It was no fussy eater, though. Like a grizzly at a salmon run it took whatever it could, but fish were the staple that let such a giant thrive.
On the menu
How big was Spinosaurus?
Spinosaurus reached up to about 15 metres (49 feet) long. Recent studies put its weight near 7 tonnes, while older estimates ran as high as 20 tonnes. That makes it the longest predatory dinosaur known to science, longer than both Tyrannosaurus rex and Giganotosaurus.
Is Spinosaurus bigger than a T. rex?
In length, yes. Spinosaurus was around 15 m against roughly 12 m for T. rex. But T. rex was more heavily built and had a far more powerful bite, so whether it was truly 'bigger' depends on whether you mean longer or heavier.
Who would win, Spinosaurus or T. rex?
Most palaeontologists give the edge to T. rex on land. It was more robustly built and its bite, estimated around 8,000 pounds of force, could crush bone, while Spinosaurus had lighter jaws suited to catching fish. In water, Spinosaurus would have the advantage. In reality the two never met: they lived tens of millions of years apart and on different continents.
Did Spinosaurus and T. rex ever fight?
No. Spinosaurus lived about 99 to 93 million years ago in North Africa, while T. rex appeared much later, around 68 to 66 million years ago in North America. Their famous fight only happened in the film Jurassic Park III.
What did Spinosaurus eat?
Mainly fish. Its conical, un-serrated teeth, long narrow jaws and pressure-sensing snout are the hallmarks of a piscivore, though it would have taken other prey and carrion near the water when it could.
