While paleontologists have known of Spinosaurus for a while now (as have viewers of "Jurassic Park 3"), recent findings reveal some surprising new information about the life of the largest carnivore known to have ever walked the Earth.
For starters, Spinosaurus is massive. Measuring in at over 50 feet long, Spinosaurus is nine feet longer than the world's largest Tyrannosaurus Rex specimen. But this big bad dino isn't like other large carnivores.
Rather than living on land, Spinosaurus lived in water and could swim, a first for a non-avian dinosaur, according Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist and co-author of a new study published in Science.
Spinosaurus was specially adapted to life in the water. New findings reveal that the creature had small nostrils in the middle of its skull, allowing the dinosaur to breathe while most of its head was underwater.
The creature doesn't only look like a two-legged crocodile, it likely also shared other features with them as well, specifically pressure receptors at the end of its snout that, just like crocodiles, would have allowed the dinosaur to better sense movement in water. Spinosaurus's claws and teeth are also designed as ideal weapons to catching and slicing slippery fish.
Even the bones of Spinosaurus are adapted to aquatic life. Unlike land carnivores, Spinosaurus featured dense bones lacking marrow cavities seen in other carnivorous dinosaurs. These may have granted Spinosaurus better buoyancy control in the water, as seen in modern animals like King Penguins. The creatures relative lack of leg muscles would have made it difficult for the creature to maneuver on land, but in the water it would have excelled in the water along with its paddle-like feet.
Spinosaurus was originally discovered by German paleontologist Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach in 1915, but his collection of fossils were destroyed during Allied bombing of Munich in World War II. Although some of Stromer's research lived on, the world thought Spinosaurus was lost forever.
It would take a chance discovery by co-author of the study, Nizar Ibrahim, to uncover new fossils of the unmistakable creature. While working on his PhD, Ibrahim met a local fossil hunter who had found a very distinctive fossil of a spine.
At the time Ibrahim took the fossil and stored it in a university collection. It was only later that he realized what dinosaur the spine belonged to, but he didn't know where the fossil hunter had originally found the rare bone and had no idea how to contact him. In 2013 they finally found the man, who agreed to show them where he originally found the highly prized fossil -- in the Sahara desert, along cliffs known as the Kem Kem beds.
The Spinosaurus fossils and findings will be part of a new centerpiece exhibit at the National Geographic Museum in Washington D.C., as well as a PBS special airing on Nov. 5.
Photo: Kabachi via Flickr
