in 1954, edwin h. colbert and roland t. bird speculated that "deinosuchus" "may very well have hunted and devoured some of the dinosaurs with which it was contemporaneous". colbert restated this hypothesis more confidently in 1961: "certainly this crocodile must have been a predator of dinosaurs; otherwise why would it have been so overwhelmingly gigantic? it hunted in the water where the giant theropods could not go." david r. schwimmer proposed in 2002 that several hadrosaurid tail vertebrae found near big bend national park show evidence of "deinosuchus" tooth marks, strengthening the hypothesis that "deinosuchus" fed on dinosaurs in at least some instances. in 2003, christopher a. brochu agreed that "deinosuchus" "probably dined on ornithopods from time to time." "deinosuchus" is generally thought to have employed hunting tactics similar to those of modern crocodilians, ambushing dinosaurs and other terrestrial animals at the water's edge and then submerging them until they drowned. a 2014 study suggested that it would have been able to perform a "death roll", like modern crocodiles.