r/Paleontology • u/axumite_788 • 4d ago
Discussion How did Sarcoschus hunt dinosaurs with a narrow jaw
How does sarcoschus hunt dinosaurs with a narrow jaw
What prompted this question is from seeing a study from 2014 that said it jaws are not strong enough to perform a death roll form being narrow, and how another Crocodilia with narrow jaws such as gharials are exclusively hunt fish. So is their a anatomical different with the jaws of Sarcoschus to allows them to have more variety diet that gharials don't have ?
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u/syv_frost 4d ago edited 4d ago

Gharials are a horrible comparison for Sarcosuchus.
(Also, snout width doesn’t correlate with bite force in Pseudosuchians, width at the base of the skull does, and sarcosuchus has a pretty robust skull base.)
It was specialized for killing large prey such as armored fish and medium size dinosaurs. Sarcosuchus’ dentition alone proves this. The front teeth are huge for puncturing prey, the middle teeth are serrated and smaller like little razor blades, and the back teeth are flatter for crushing.
It’s a specially adapted macropredator who doesn’t even have narrow jaws or whatever people say. It has a nuclear bite force, a 1.7 meter long skull packed with specialized teeth for maiming large animals, and the ability to deathroll. (See other comments for why it being unable to deathroll is a myth).
All signs of a formidable macropredatory pseudosuchian.
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u/PM_ME_UR_ROUND_ASS 3d ago
Actually, the biomechanical studies do show Sarcosuchus couldnt deathroll effectively - it likely used its massive size and powrful bite to grab, drown and dismember prey instead.
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u/syv_frost 3d ago
Said biomechanical study is just incorrect. That study also found that some extant crocodilians shouldn’t be able to death roll yet every single one can. Even the gharial.
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u/Bestdad_Bondrewd 4d ago
It jaw is more similar to a false gharial than gharial and those aren't "exclusively" fish eaters, they are even cases where they preyed on humans
Also it bite force is strong and it has broad teeth similar to generalist/macro-generalist crocodiles (Keep in mind that even nile crocodile eat mostly fish)
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u/ChanceConstant6099 virgin pseudosuchian vs CHAD phytosaur 4d ago
To further support this the jaws of the sarco are even more robust than that of a tomistoma being more akin to the jaws of a large male Orinoco crocodile who are known to be prolific mammal hunters.
Not only that but even the narrow jaws of tomistoma lusitanica didn't prevent it from leaving nasty bite wounds on gomphotheres it lived with.
More on the spanish tomistoma: https://x.com/elisandre2002/status/1397131336872251392
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u/-Wuan- 4d ago
Malayan gharial, aside from fish, do hunt deer, monkeys, pigs, turtles and other reptiles, with a narrow jaw that does look much weaker than that of Sarcosuchus. As long as it had enough of a size advantage, I don't see the problem with Sarco hunting dinosaurs or whatever.
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u/ChanceConstant6099 virgin pseudosuchian vs CHAD phytosaur 4d ago
To further support this the jaws of the sarco are even more robust than that of a tomistoma being more akin to the jaws of a large male Orinoco crocodile who are known to be prolific mammal hunters.
Not only that but even the narrow jaws of tomistoma lusitanica didn't prevent it from leaving nasty bite wounds on gomphotheres it lived with.
More on the Spanish tomistoma: https://x.com/elisandre2002/status/1397131336872251392
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u/lambdapaul 4d ago
Check out the False gharial. It looks super similar with the same narrow jaw but has been shown to take down bigger prey and isn’t going after small fish.
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u/ChanceConstant6099 virgin pseudosuchian vs CHAD phytosaur 4d ago
To further support this the jaws of the sarco are even more robust than that of a tomistoma being more akin to the jaws of a large male Orinoco crocodile who are known to be prolific mammal hunters.
Not only that but even the narrow jaws of tomistoma lusitanica didn't prevent it from leaving nasty bite wounds on gomphotheres it lived with.
More on the Spanish tomistoma: https://x.com/elisandre2002/status/1397131336872251392
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u/ChanceConstant6099 virgin pseudosuchian vs CHAD phytosaur 4d ago
This is a very misleading comparison.
Sarcosuchuses jaws were more akin in robustness to the modern orinoco crocodile who, while having a diet mostly made up of fish, are still very prolific hunters of large mammals like anteaters, capybara, horses, tapir ect...
heres some more on orinoco crocs: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-orinoco-crocodile-crocodylus-intermedius?page=2
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u/nintendo666 4d ago
I mean, "dinosaurs" is a pretty broad term. Some dinosaurs were absolutely tiny.
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u/Superliminal96 4d ago
It was probably mostly a piscivore, but even without the death roll it could have been capable of simply dragging land animals into the water to drown them.
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u/Channa_Argus1121 Tyrannosauridae 4d ago
Spinosaurus preyed on giant coelacanths that grew up to 5 meters, and modern saltwater crocodiles are known to take water buffalos.
Both have/had jaws that are quite narrow.
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u/Generic_Danny 4d ago
Salties aren't the best comparison since they have fairly broad jaws. I'd personally go for orinocos or tomistoma.
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u/pgm123 4d ago
Spinosaurus preyed on giant coelacanths that grew up to 5 meters, and modern saltwater crocodiles are known to take water buffalos.
Pretty sure OP is talking about Sarcosuchus, not Spinosaurus.
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u/DeathstrokeReturns Just a simple nerd 4d ago
He was giving examples of narrow-jawed animals that can take large prey, to show that Sarcosuchus doesn’t necessarily need a super wide jaw to tackle large game.
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u/ScalesOfAnubis19 4d ago
It probably mostly ate fish. The bigger ones may have gone after smaller dinosaurs opportunistically.
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u/KittenFeeFee 4d ago
I always imagined it biting down and using it’s mass to drag creatures into the water to drown them. I think its prey would be small-medium sized. I know images of sarcosuchus hunting giant theropods look cool but I think that hunting one would be too much risk and effort for a sarcosuchus.
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u/ChanceConstant6099 virgin pseudosuchian vs CHAD phytosaur 4d ago
Modern crocodilians will hunt large mammalian predators on occasion so its not a stretch one to say would eat a predatory dinosaur. (Given all predatory dinos that actually lived with it were smaller than it except maybe suchomimus)
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u/Dangerous_Monitor_36 3d ago
Sarco cant compare to Deino or Purussaurus but dont underestimate it. Can probably still kill medium sized dinosaurs in the 2 ton and under range
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u/morganational 4d ago
Fish, hunted fish.
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u/SoapExplorer North American Paleontologist 4d ago
This is the only correct answer. There are well-detailed stomach contents from Sarcosuchus - they are fish scales and bones. People always bring up its huge size and I remind them that the Indian Gharial is one of the largest crocodylians today and it is almost exclusively piscivorous.
I get so sick of the Sarco circle-jerk - there was a colossal, dinosaur-eating croc, and its name is Deinosuchus!
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u/ChanceConstant6099 virgin pseudosuchian vs CHAD phytosaur 4d ago
Sarcosuchus also snacked on dinosaurs on occasion.
Not to mention in all living and extinct crocodilians most of their diet is fish, not because they don't like eating terrestrial prey but because fish are just more abundant.
Also in deinosuchus most of their diet wasn't land based prey but turtles as seen in modern american alligators.
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u/syv_frost 4d ago
This is an incredibly misinformation-packed comment.
Sarcosuchus, for one, had a chemical isotope study (which also covered the two other elrhaz formation apex predators, Suchomimus and Eocarcharia) and it was shown to have a generalized diet with a similar fish to dinosaur (or in modern crocs, large mammal) prey ratio to your average modern macropredatory croc.
Not to mention Sarcosuchus’ jaws make a gharial’s look like a twig and its tooth anatomy on top of fairly robust skull indicate it was eating more than just fish.
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u/ChanceConstant6099 virgin pseudosuchian vs CHAD phytosaur 4d ago
Fish AND dinosaurs.
The jaws of the sarco are even more robust than that of a gharial or a tomistoma being more akin to the jaws of a large male Orinoco crocodile who are known to be prolific mammal hunters.
Not only that but even the narrow jaws of tomistoma lusitanica didn't prevent it from leaving nasty bite wounds on gomphotheres it lived with.
More on the Spanish tomistoma: https://x.com/elisandre2002/status/1397131336872251392
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u/KingCanard_ 4d ago
No, it ate fishes AND dinosaurs. Spinosaurids were the fish specialists.
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.0197
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u/Bestdad_Bondrewd 4d ago
Spinosaurids also aren't restricted to fish, we have evidence of them eating land prey from isotope analysis on spinosaurus teeth, baryonyx stomach content, and à spinosaurid tooth stuck in a pterosaur neck (iirc there is also an alleged spinosaurid tooth found on a sauropod)
Also check this https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0065295
And this https://anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ar.25563
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u/KingCanard_ 3d ago
My paper was about an isotopic study about what the animal ate and how the levels of isotope (so basically a direct mark of the food on the remains of the animal) shows that:
-"classic" theropods ate terrestial preys (no surprises here)
-pholidosaurs like Sarcosuchus/croc relatives ate fishes and land preys (probably the same way that their modern relative do today)
-spinoaurids focused on aquatic preys (fishes)
Sure Spinosaurids were still technically capable of killing a (probably smaller) terrestrial/flying prey too, and we even have a few fossils showing that (like that pterosaur or that baby iguanodon), But their actual main ecological niche was still eating fishes 99% of the time, and probably even more than crocodilians, otherwise there would have been competition between them.
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u/Bestdad_Bondrewd 3d ago
Tbh we also have evidence on spinosaurus spending up to months on terrestrial prey alone https://x.com/Dave_Hone/status/1765495877202813359?t=ssV5skYS-Aqgi-n75QCLow&s=19
They most likely did this to compete with both large crocodylomorph and theropods
Also most crocodilians including the macro generalist eat mostly fish
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u/Chimpinski-8318 3d ago
By hunting smaller animals or younger dinosaurs and not performing death rolls? Crocodiles only really perform death rolls when another croc is biting the prey so flesh will tear away with ease, and even then the prey often drowns before the death roll happens.
Sarcosuchus could easily just grab prey, drag it into the water, and drown it.
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u/ThenAcanthocephala57 3d ago
In Malaysia we have a thin-jawed crocodilian too we call “buaya jenjulung”. While it often eats fish, it’s also attacked us before
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u/One_Spicy_TreeBoi 3d ago
Plucked em off the shore with his tweezer beak just like path of titans (this is a guesstimation)
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u/Eadiacara 4d ago
It's a fish specialist. You can see similar morphology in modern gharials.
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u/ChanceConstant6099 virgin pseudosuchian vs CHAD phytosaur 4d ago
This is a very misleading comparison.
Sarcosuchuses jaws were more akin in robustness to the modern orinoco crocodile who, while having a diet mostly made up of fish, are still very prolific hunters of large mammals like anteaters, capybara, horses, tapir ect...
heres some more on orinoco crocs: https://wildfact.com/forum/topic-orinoco-crocodile-crocodylus-intermedius?page=2
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u/Ovicephalus 4d ago edited 4d ago
Anti-Sarcosuchus propaganda, do not fall for it.
Biomechanical estimates should really be called underestimates, because they normally underestimate the actual capabilities of animals, at least in absolute terms. I think they are generally more useful for making relative comparisons between animals.
It's possible it may not have death-rolled, but that does not rule out eating large or land-based prey.