An apex predator that once roamed the Earth around 230 million years ago had a surprisingly weak bite for its size, researchers have found.
A team of paleontologists re-created the original skull anatomy of a reptile from the Late Triassic period, known as Saurosuchus, for a study published in the journal The Anatomical Record.
Saurosuchus was a large predator—a distant relative of modern crocodiles—that stood between 16 and 26 feet in length and weighed more than 250 pounds.
But an analysis of this prehistoric predator’s skull conducted by a team at Britain’s University of Birmingham (UB) found that its bite likely was significantly weaker than previously thought. So much so that the animal probably would not have been able to crunch through bone to consume the entirety of its kill.
Bestwick & Lautenschlager et al. / The Anatomical Record 2023
The team also compared the bite force to other animals, finding it was significantly weaker than that of dinosaurs that appeared later, such as Allosaurus and Tyrannosaurus rex.
According to the study, Saurosuchus likely had a bite with the force of 1,015 to 1,885 newtons. This is roughly equivalent to modern gharials—a type of crocodilian. Allosaurus, which grew to an average of around 28 feet in length, had an estimated bite force of 3,572 newtons.
The bite of T. rex was several times more powerful, estimated to produce between 17,000 and 35,000 newtons of force.
T. rex was one of the largest carnivorous dinosaurs to walk the Earth, standing up to 20 feet tall and measuring as much as 40 feet in length. The dinosaur is thought to have had one of the most powerful bites of any animal that ever lived.
Modern saltwater crocodiles, which can grow up to around 20 feet in length, also have a far stronger bite than Saurosuchus, producing an estimated force of around 16,000 newtons.
The latest findings have implications for our understanding of how Saurosuchus hunted and killed its prey, according to the researchers.
“We found that Saurosuchus actually had an incredibly weak bite for its size and thus predated animals in very different ways compared to later evolving dinosaurs,” Jordan Bestwick, an author of the UB study, said in a press release.
He continued: “In fact, despite being one of the bigger lizards and an apex predator, the Saurosuchus had a bite that was on a par with the relatively measly bite of the gharial, and much less powerful than more fearsome crocs and alligators around today.”
“You would still have liked to leave Saurosuchus well alone, but they likely fed only on the soft fleshy bits of their kills as their bite wouldn’t have enabled them to crunch up bones,” Bestwick said.
Despite its relatively large size, Saurosuchus would likely have had to eat its prey carefully, using its back teeth to remove flesh from the bones.
“The Saurosuchus would certainly have been a fearsome reptile until it sat down to eat its prey, and we can see how evolutionary details in the skulls of these massive apex predators necessitated significant differences in eating behavior,” Stephan Lautenschlager, another author of the study, said in the release.
He continued: “While dinosaurs that followed in the Jurassic period would have eaten the vast majority of their kills, Saurosuchus may have left more complete carcasses, which would have provided a secondary meal for carrion-feeding animals too.”