A Possible Use For The Spinosaurus Sail

[BobWill]

I added this to a conversation in "Fossil News" but thought I would include it here to see if anybody thinks it's as crazy as some of my other ideas or if maybe this one has some merit.

Even though Dr. Ibrahim has decided the sail on Spinosaurus probably had no use other than display, I recently read something that has me wondering about another possibility. A paper by Thomas Vance of Navarro College that appeared in the 1997 issue of the Dallas Paleontological Society Occasional Papers discusses the presence of a nuchal and dorsal crest on many early drawings of mosasaurs. It seems the idea for the crest was eventually discarded but in the article he also mentioned the high dorsal spinous processes on the vertebrae of mosasaurs that "served as a site for muscle attachment. The muscles evidently aided in swimming.."

I suppose there is some difference in a spinous process on a vertebra and the spines on Spinosaurus but the idea has me intrigued. I suppose the answer would have something to do with whether the spines actually had similar muscle attachment areas and how firmly they were attached to the vertebrae, neither of which I know. If this could have been a feature that aided in swimming, the size and shape of the muscles might even slightly change the look of the cross-section of the dinosaur, and the extra swimming power from such a muscle would certainly have added to the effectiveness of this awesome predator.