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First Swimming Dinosaur Discovered
New species of dinosaur are dug up almost weekly these days, and often they’re bigger than those found earlier.
So what makes Spinosaurus special is not that it’s a larger predator than Tyrannosaurus rex, though it is, but that it lived in the water.
This is exceptional because dinosaurs were all land animals. The seas were dominated by a different line of giant creatures, the plesiosaurs, just as the air belonged to the pterosaurs.
The new find is thought to have lived in the rivers of North Africa 97 million years ago (Ma) in the Cretaceous, the last age of the dinosaurs, when the region was a sprawling river and marsh system. It probably ate fish, crocodiles and even giant sharks.
“Spinosaurus wasn’t a land animal,” University of Chicago palaeontologist Dr Nizar Ibrahim told National Geographic. “This was a creature adapted to life in the water.”
The conclusion, reported in the journal Science, follows the discovery of a Spinosaurus aegyptiacus fossil, including skull, claws and the bones in its dorsal sail, in the Moroccan Sahara.
The give-away detail is that Spinosaurus, despite its overall length, of 15.2 metres, had narrow thighs and short rear legs ending in paddle-like feet, poor adaptations for chasing prey on land but not a problem in the water.
It also has nostrils half way along its long, narrow upper jaw, allowing it to semi-submerge like a crocodile, and blood vessel channels in the tip of its snout that would have made it sensitive to pressure changes caused by fleeing prey.
It was armed with backward slanted teeth and long forelimbs with hooked claws.
Its long neck and trunk probably made it too top heavy to walk upright on land. And it certainly didn’t engage in land combat with T rex, as depicted in the film Jurassic Park III, not least because the two species lived millions of years apart.
Spinosaurus also had unusually dense leg bones for a dinosaur, though the extra weight would have come in useful to counter buoyancy in the water.
Its most distinctive feature, though, is the massive, 1.8 metre sail on its back, the largest among known dinosaurs and the inspiration for its name. It was probably for display, to warn off rivals and attract mates.
The first specimen of the species, known as the holotype, was discovered in Egypt in 1912 by Richard Markgraf and described by Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach, but was destroyed by Allied bombing of Munich in April 1944. Only drawings and a written description remain.
Dr Ibrahim tracked down these records at Stromer’s family castle in Bavaria, hearing along the way of a fossil collector who had found the new specimen in Saharan cliffs called the Kem Kem beds.
First Swimming Dinosaur Discovered - Forbes
New species of dinosaur are dug up almost weekly these days, and often they’re bigger than those found earlier.
So what makes Spinosaurus special is not that it’s a larger predator than Tyrannosaurus rex, though it is, but that it lived in the water.
This is exceptional because dinosaurs were all land animals. The seas were dominated by a different line of giant creatures, the plesiosaurs, just as the air belonged to the pterosaurs.
The new find is thought to have lived in the rivers of North Africa 97 million years ago (Ma) in the Cretaceous, the last age of the dinosaurs, when the region was a sprawling river and marsh system. It probably ate fish, crocodiles and even giant sharks.
“Spinosaurus wasn’t a land animal,” University of Chicago palaeontologist Dr Nizar Ibrahim told National Geographic. “This was a creature adapted to life in the water.”
The conclusion, reported in the journal Science, follows the discovery of a Spinosaurus aegyptiacus fossil, including skull, claws and the bones in its dorsal sail, in the Moroccan Sahara.
The give-away detail is that Spinosaurus, despite its overall length, of 15.2 metres, had narrow thighs and short rear legs ending in paddle-like feet, poor adaptations for chasing prey on land but not a problem in the water.
It also has nostrils half way along its long, narrow upper jaw, allowing it to semi-submerge like a crocodile, and blood vessel channels in the tip of its snout that would have made it sensitive to pressure changes caused by fleeing prey.
It was armed with backward slanted teeth and long forelimbs with hooked claws.
Its long neck and trunk probably made it too top heavy to walk upright on land. And it certainly didn’t engage in land combat with T rex, as depicted in the film Jurassic Park III, not least because the two species lived millions of years apart.
Spinosaurus also had unusually dense leg bones for a dinosaur, though the extra weight would have come in useful to counter buoyancy in the water.
Its most distinctive feature, though, is the massive, 1.8 metre sail on its back, the largest among known dinosaurs and the inspiration for its name. It was probably for display, to warn off rivals and attract mates.
The first specimen of the species, known as the holotype, was discovered in Egypt in 1912 by Richard Markgraf and described by Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach, but was destroyed by Allied bombing of Munich in April 1944. Only drawings and a written description remain.
Dr Ibrahim tracked down these records at Stromer’s family castle in Bavaria, hearing along the way of a fossil collector who had found the new specimen in Saharan cliffs called the Kem Kem beds.
First Swimming Dinosaur Discovered - Forbes
