It was going to happen at some point. Nobody who talks about the franchise can ignore this controversial topic forever. I happen to like the debate when the toxicity of rabid fanboys is absent, so I figured I’d get on this early. I’ll address everything I can about the debate, including real life against fiction. To give you an idea of how controversial this one scene is, the clip on YouTube has over twenty-five million views.
During early development of 2001’s Jurassic Park III, it was decided that a new dinosaur would replace the Tyrannosaurus rex as the big threat. You can go on YouTube and find behind-the-scenes footage from the production of the movie, where you’ll see guys like Jack Horner, William H. Macy, and Joe Johnston talking about the T. rex being replaced by something “bigger, badder, meaner.” There were a few candidates, namely the Baryonyx, but ultimately, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus won out due to its unique physiology. Joe Johnston in particular wanted something audiences would be able to instantly recognize was not the iconic T. rex, so the long, narrow snout and the bony sail of the Spinosaurus made it an easy winner.
Thus, Jurassic Park III introduced a new “super predator” in Spinosaurus, and the franchise was never the same.
While the third movie marked the debut of Spinosaurus, it did so in a rather poor way. Unlike the T. rex or Velociraptors in Jurassic Park, who were built up slowly throughout until they were finally revealed, Spinosaurus burst onto the screen with no buildup only twenty-two minutes in. Audiences had no idea what this new dinosaur was, and the movie didn’t try at all to explain it. In fact, the movie made us question it even more in a scene where Alan Grant and Billy Brennan reveal that the dinosaur wasn’t on InGen’s list, making its existence highly suspicious. For seventeen years, we were left to make up our own theories as to where Spinosaurus came from and why it wasn’t seen in 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park, considering both movies take place on the same island.
Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom‘s viral marketing campaign introduced the Dinosaur Protection Group website, an in-universe perspective in the world of Jurassic. On the website, we finally got some insight into the existence of Spinosaurus, among a litany of other information we never had access to before. In the report titled “What Killed the Gene Guard Act?”, this is what’s given to us:
From this, it’s made clear Spinosaurus was illegally cloned sometime in late 1998 or early 1999 (InGen was bought by Masrani in 1998), making it around two years old during the events of the third movie. This doesn’t tell us a whole lot, but it at least explains why Spinosaurus wasn’t encountered during the 1997 expedition on Isla Sorna. Imagine not only having the two parental T. rexes to worry about, but also another giant carnivore like Spinosaurus.
By 2001, Spinosaurus had reached an impressive size according to the official Jurassic Park III Comparative Size Chart, which was released with the collector’s edition DVD. Standing 16 feet high at the head and 43 feet 9 inches from snout to tail, Spinosaurus was indeed a massive theropod, complimented by the unique sail on its back that brought its total height to 19 feet 7 inches. That’s more than three times the height of the average 6-foot-tall human male. Its actions throughout the movie painted it as a highly aggressive, very persistent predator, capable of tearing apart a 43-foot passenger plane and running through a large, steel fence like it was paper.
The T. rex in the third movie was smaller than the others we had seen in the first and second movies, but still a respectable size. It was 14.5 feet high and 37 feet from snout to tail. I’ll address this right away: it was not a sub-adult. It was somewhat smaller and lighter in color than the male T. rex in the second movie, indicating it was indeed younger, but that’s as far as it goes. This myth may never die in the fandom, but it’s not for lack of trying to dispel it. See, part of the backlash from the fight was this idea that Spinosaurus killed a sub-adult T. rex, thus making the victory not as impressive. What a good chunk of mainstream fans don’t realize is that the male T. rex that fought Spinosaurus is right in adult Tyrannosaurus size standards. Real life specimen “Wankel rex” (MOR 555) is estimated to be 38 feet (11.6 meters) in length, and “Black Beauty” (RTMP 81.6.1) is said to be even smaller than that and is considered an adult. This T. rex may have been on the smaller side of the spectrum as far as real life specimens go, and perhaps still not fully grown, but it was undeniably an adult.
Due to the way CGI was utilized for the dinosaurs, their scale may not look drastically different in some shots, but from a sheer numbers standpoint, Spinosaurus certainly had some size over the T. rex—nearly seven feet of length and one-and-a-half feet of height.
Although the fight itself was only around thirty seconds, it established that Spinosaurus was not a dinosaur to be fucked with, snapping the neck of a T. rex and coming away with no lasting injuries, despite a full-on bite to the neck! The neck of a T. rex was no laughing matter, being a huge concentration of muscle on the animal. So why do I have such a problem with this fight?
Aside from the fact that the T. rex was killed, which I’ll get to later, it could be because Spinosaurus didn’t actually do much of anything impressive in the fight. The T. rex controlled the fight until it put itself in a precarious position, and that’s when Spinosaurus made its move. That move happened to be the one that ended their scrap. Otherwise, Spinosaurus was on the defensive and was barely able to land a bite or scratch on its opponent. Spinosaurus won, but if the intent was to show off a much more fearsome beast, having it completely overwhelm the T. rex would have been far more effective. Instead, it looks like Spinosaurus got lucky, which isn’t the look the filmmakers were going for. People try to claim Spinosaurus showed how “experienced” it was with its “skills,” but I have no idea what people are referring to. Like I said, it was on the defensive for the majority of the scuffle, and that wasn’t on purpose as it was seen trying to fight back the whole time—it just wasn’t successful until the end. And snapping another animal’s neck doesn’t require an extraordinary amount of skill or intelligence, the latter of which Spinosaurus was directly stated to not have very much of in behind-the-scenes material on the DVD. We do see blood from the T. rex‘s bite on Spinosaurus‘ neck during the fight, but it disappears in subsequent scenes, so take that as you will.
As aforementioned, the T. rex individual in the third movie was smaller than the other individuals encountered in the other movies. The parental adults from the second movie would be closer in size to this one, but still bigger. I don’t have concrete numbers, so I’ll use the general estimate of the species in the franchise, that being 40 feet long and 16 feet high. As far as weight goes, the only confirmed numbers comes from a Cinefex article citing the male (the “Buck”) as being 8 tons, or 16,000 pounds, and Jurassic Park III DVD bonus material also citing the third film’s T. rex at 8 tons. The second film’s male was specifically made bulkier than his mate (the “Doe”), so she would likely be somewhat less hefty, perhaps around the 7 ton mark, but the same in length and height since we have no evidence sexual dimorphism extends to size in the movies. There wasn’t a given age for the male in the third movie (fuck it, let’s call him the “Bull”), but given his brighter green color scheme compared to the Buck, it’s not out of this world to assume he was younger than the parents, and we know they could have only been eleven years old by 1997 if they were cloned in 1986; it’s impossible to know if they were from the original batch of six Tyrannosaurus rex InGen cloned on Site B or a second generation, given how quickly the dinosaurs grew to adulthood. On paper, the Buck and Doe are physically superior to the Bull, but that doesn’t mean everything. After all, I just pointed out how the Bull, despite being noticeably smaller than Spinosaurus, was able to give Spinosaurus a good fight before dying.
Physical stats, environment, and individual traits need to be factored into a discussion when we’re trying to determine a winner from a hypothetical fight. Feats are physical events that can be verified, such as Spinosaurus bursting through the steel fence by the aviary on Isla Sorna, or the Indominus rex knocking out “Blue” (a Velociraptor) with one smack. We use feats to judge the capability of something/someone. Statements are helpful as well, such as John Hammond declaring they had “clocked the T. rex at 32 miles per hour” in the first movie. We don’t have to see an accompanying feat to trust a statement as long as it isn’t contradicted. In the case of Spinosaurus, its feats would include:
- Being hit on the hip by a speeding plane with only a small flesh wound to show for it.
- Ripping apart a passenger plane with ease.
- Killing an adult T. rex with no lasting wounds.
- Running through a large steel fence with no injuries.
When running these hypothetical battles, valid feats and statements must be used, and invalid or unconfirmed evidences should be disregarded. Spinosaurus surviving multiple shots from Cooper’s rifle is unconfirmed evidence, as is Spinosaurus killing other Tyrannosaurs prior to the fight we saw in the third movie. It simply cannot be proven in any capacity, thus should be ignored when brought up. That’s fair for everyone, otherwise things begin to spiral into a never-ending debate of “possibilities.” When someone begins to head down that path, it usually indicates they have nothing else to argue with.
Another problem I have is that the fight itself was marred by plot-induced stupidity. The first thing that happened was the T. rex biting down on Spinosaurus‘ neck, something that should have by all means killed it outright. Despite this, Spinosaurus managed to remove itself from the T. rex‘s death grip and continue the fight. The T. rex lowered its head and rammed into Spinosaurus‘ leg, merely putting the latter off-balance for a split second rather than shattering the bones. With the T. rex in a vulnerable position, Spinosaurus latched onto its body with its long arms and bit down on its neck, twisting and snapping it to win the fight. The fight was about thirty seconds in total, but it showed just how powerful Spinosaurus was (or was intended to be). The filmmakers wanted so badly to prop up the new Big Bad that they ignored the physics of the fight. To top it off, there was a line later in the movie about Spinosaurus being attracted to T. rex urine, so this thing wasn’t afraid to throw down with theropods on the same level as it, but rather embraced the idea.
In real life, Tyrannosaurus rex was a powerful apex predator just as it is in the Jurassic Park franchise. “Sue,” the largest complete specimen thus far, measures 40 feet in length and 12 feet high at the hips. Her weight has bounced around over the years, but is currently estimated to have been between 9 and 15 tons. Despite Sue’s impressive size, the average weight for a T. rex is estimated to be between 6 and 9 tons. A T. rex‘s bite force was estimated to have been anywhere from 7,800 pounds of force all the way up to an astonishing 52,800. That’s more than ten times the power of an alligator’s bite using just the low end estimate. This is why the Bull biting down on Spinosaurus‘ neck and the latter still having a head attached is completely unrealistic.
On the other side of the debate, Spinosaurus in real life was a totally different animal than portrayed in Jurassic Park III, and one of the most mysterious due to the huge lack of fossils for it. New studies come out all the time with different ideas of what it looked like, how big it was, what it ate, and if it could even swim. The posture of Spinosaurus has switched between bipedal to quadrupedal, back and forth. For more than a decade now, Spinosaurus size estimates ranged from about 45 to 60 feet in length with a wide range of mass estimates, some hitting 20 tons. The largest estimate was born out of a scaling of specimen MSNM V4047, which was a snout. In 2018, MSNM V4047 was reassigned to Sigilimassasaurus, which brought Spinosaurus all the way down to the holotype’s size of 37 to 39 feet long and weighing approximately 3.3 to 3.8 tons. More recent studies indicate Spinosaurus‘ diet consisted more of fish than land animals, but was dependent mostly on individual size. Spinosaurus‘ bite force hasn’t been measured at length like T. rex‘s, but for now, it’s safe to say that it wasn’t very impressive due to the narrowness of the skull and its conical teeth.
Spinosaurus may have been around the same length (or longer if MSNM V4047’s assignment is changed in the future), but weighed considerably less and was not built for crushing bone or taking down large animals like Tyrannosaurus rex was. If the Jurassic Park III fight had happened with the real animals, Spinosaurus would have been mauled within seconds. That’s ignoring the fact that most large animals tend to avoid confrontation unless it’s for a mate, food, or territory; Spinosaurus in the third movie actively sought out fights. There simply is no comparison between the two from a fossil record standpoint. Of course, back when the third movie was in production, almost nothing was known about Spinosaurus, so Jack Horner took what was available and did what he could with it, so he can’t be completely to blame for the inaccurate specimen seen. On a side note, it’s interesting that he mentioned Spinosaurus being 60 feet long in the behind-the-scenes footage, but neither the animatronic nor ILM’s CG model ever got that big.
Luckily, most fans acknowledge that Spinosaurus would be no match for a T. rex in real life. In the Jurassic Park franchise, it’s a different story. Spinosaurus was intended to be bigger and badder than the T. rex, even though that intention was only implemented in the third movie; Jurassic World went back on that by symbolically having Rexy shatter the Spinosaurus skeleton on Main Street (which was not the individual from the third movie, just in case anyone was worried). It’s very possible Spinosaurus could take down the average T. rex more times than not, but what is the “average” T. rex in the franchise?
I’ve been rambling for a while, but to get down to it, the scene was a huge mistake not only because it killed the T. rex, but also because it did so in such a nonchalant fashion. None of the characters even reacted to a fucking Tyrannosaurus rex getting overtaken. You would think at least Grant would be interested. Go up to anyone and ask them what their favorite character is, and then ask them if they’d like that character to be unceremoniously replaced for no reason and with no care for how it’s done. You won’t find a single person that likes the idea, and that’s why so many fans were pissed off by the fight. Killing the T. rex was one thing, but doing it half an hour into the movie made the whole issue worse. Imagine Blue in the sixth movie gets into a fight with a newly bred Utahraptor and promptly gets her head ripped off. Imagine Buzz and Woody from Toy Story being replaced out of the blue and thrown into the trash bin in the next movie. Fans of all ages would be in an uproar. That’s how it felt to watch Spinosaurus kill the T. rex, because it was so poorly done. They didn’t even need to kill the T. rex; the fight could have simply been left open-ended for fans to decide. Did Rexy need to kill another dinosaur to be established as a threat in the first movie? Or the raptors? If the answer is no, which is it, then there wasn’t a sufficient need to have Spinosaurus kill off the T. rex to establish it was taking over.
Fans have been chomping at the bit for a rematch just so Spinosaurus can be killed. It’s a somewhat toxic mentality to have, but because of the performance of the third movie, it’s a very real possibility in the future.
Do I think Spinosaurus could take down the three other Tyrannosaurs from the first and second movies? Maybe, maybe not. I know that’s a copout answer but I don’t want to discredit Spinosaurus or Tyrannosaurus. Both are presented as beasts in the movies. I also find it to be less than a zero percent chance Spinosaurus would be able to kill the Buck and Doe while they’re together, and yes, I’ve seen people that think that.
Galaxy Empire 
