Spinosaurus
Spinosaurus
(99–94 mya)
Spinosaurus is an extinct genus of carnivorous theropod dinosaur of Spinosauridae family. It inhabited North Africa territory during the Late Cretaceous period, about 112 million years ago. First fossils were discovered in the Bahariya Formation of western Egypt. It inhabited Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunis and perhaps Kenya, Brasilia and Cameroon.
Spinosaurus skeleton was reconstructed four times due to small amount of factual material. At first, he looked like bipedal terrestrial theropod, but in 2020 the paleontologists made a statement that the reptile belonged to aquatic animals with a "sail” (tall neural spines) on its back. It was capable of swimming due to its long flexible tail similar to crocodile's one. Valued discovery included complete set of tail vertebrae and its structure confirmed the aquatic life theory. The main reason is long neural spines distinguished Spinosaurus from other theropods indicating the reptile’s tail was flat forming flexible fin.
Spinosaurus distinctive feature was its long and large sail-like neural spine about two metres long. The reptile had a rather long skull of 1.75 m long akin to crocodilian one. Spinosaurus was about 16 metres in length and weighed 9 tonnes. All fours limbs had four clawed toes. Mouth contained about 40 unserrated straight teeth. Despite of jaws strength teeth were not adapted for jerking the flesh or gripping preys. Therefore, the dinosaur could not have a fatal bite as tyrannosaur. Spinosaurus fed on fish and reptiles inhabited shallow water.
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