The Tale of the Tall Backed king!!

image credits : Gaim Chirinos

The Strange skeleton !                            

In the early Cretaceous period (145 million years ago to 100.5 million years ago) of North America, there were so many kinds of strange creatures that roamed the earth. Dinosaurs still thrived at the top of the food chain. Mammals, despite their small size, need to live underground to avoid being eaten by larger animals. from the many kinds of predators, Acrocanthosaurus was the top predator in North America during this period. This strange backed creature was first found in Atoka County, Oklahoma in 1947. Paleontologists named the dinosaur Acrocanthosaurus atokensis, (in Greek high-spined lizard from the Atoka). Two much more complete skeletons were found in 1990 in North America. These skeletons assisted paleontologists in understanding this massive creature and its behavior at the time. The dinosaur was a Theropod carnivorous dinosaur (a dinosaur group that is closely related to birds and most of them walked on two legs) that was classified in the Carcharodontosaurid subfamily. Along with the spinosaurids, Carcharodontosaurids were the largest predators in the early and middle Cretaceous throughout Gondwana (a supercontinent). Acrocanthosaurus was a large predator with an unusually tall spine that none of his relatives had.

image credit: dinosaur battle world fandom

Dominating the pre historic world !                                       

Acrocanthosaurs were close in size to Tyrannosaurus rex and Spinosaurus, which are more well-known dinosaurs. According to paleontologists, a full-grown adult Acro might be 35 feet long and weigh up to 6 tons. As a result, we can deduce that Acrocanthosaurs were the dominant predators in their environment at the time. The neck and spine of the animal were punctuated with foot-long neural spines that may have helped to swim or for short sail. Acrocanthosaurus was one of the few dinosaurs about which we know the detailed structure of its brain. That helped to find a lot of behaviors and abilities for this animal. Acrocanthosaurus had a highly developed sense of smell that increased its predator abilities much more. Because of the massive size and highly predatory abilities, we can confirm that this dinosaur was the apex predator of North America for around 20 million years during the early Cretaceous period, appearing 15 million years after the much smaller Allosaurus went extinct and 50 million years before the arrival of the slightly larger T. Rex.

Diet of the giant !

Acrocanthosaurs, like any other dinosaur, required a large amount of meat, so they had to hunt similarly. Paleontologists claim that Acrocanthosaurus often prayed on hadrosaurids (duck-billed dinosaurs) and sauropods (huge long-necked lizards) of south-central North America. The biggest and most famous skeleton of this animal can be found in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. It is a 40-foot-long specimen with a full skull that has been more than half-reconstructed from real fossil bones. After a very long and successful run as the king of the food chain, this enormous king went extinct around 113-66 million years ago. The reasons for their extinction were most likely to be natural disasters like earthquakes or meteor hits.