Spinosaurus

Spinosaurus aegyptiacus is the largest predatory dinosaur discovered so far. It was bigger than the infamous T-rex, and even is depicted killing one in the 2001 film Jurassic Park 3. Spinosaurus remains have been found in Egypt and Morocco. It was 45 to 60 feet long from nose to the tip of it's tail, 18 feet high, and may have weighed 10-20 tons. Spinosaurus also sported 5-6 foot long spines on it's back. It is believed that these spines had a thin layer of skin and blood vessels between them. Possible uses for such an organ were, thermoregulation, sexual display, and species identification. Some paleontologists have even suggested the sail could have been muscular and aided Spinosaurus in swimming.

Two species of Spinosaurus have been named: Spinosaurus aegyptiacus and Spinosaurus maroccanus. The first described fossils of Spinosaurus were discovered and characterized in the early 20th century. In 1912, Richard Markgraf found an incomplete skeleton of the dinosaur in the Bahariya Formation of what is now western Egypt. In 1915, German paleontologist Ernst Stromer produced an article classifying the specimen to a new genus and species Spinosaurus aegyptiacus. The original specimen was destroyed in World War II during the 1944 British bombing of Munich which took place on the night of April 24/25. The raid damaged the building housing the Paläontologische Staatssammlung München (Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology). However, detailed drawings and descriptions of the specimen remained and in 1995 Stromer's son donated these drawing and schematics to the museum. From these drawings and subsequent discoveries by American paleontologist Paul Sereno, we now have a more accurate picture of how this huge predator may have looked.

Spinosaurus and it's relatives had many unique features that set them apart from other theropods. One of these was it's skull and jaw which was long and narrow like that of a modern crocodiles. It had numerous pits in it's snout, just like many crocodilians. It also had teeth that were conical like a crocodile which are ideal for catching and holding onto slippery prey like fish. With these adaptions it is likely that Spinosaurus spent most of it's time by rivers and streams and used the pits in it's snout to detect the motion of passing fish like most crocodilians do today. During the middle cretaceous, when Spinosaurus was alive there would have been many wetlands and swamps in North Africa and Spinosaurus would have been exploiting this. It probably lived very much like the Nile crocodile of Africa today. Unlike the Nile crocodile Spinosaurus was bipedal, and as a biped it also moved around quite a bit on land. It was absolutely large enough to tackle any of the other herbivorous dinosaurs in it's environment such as Oranosaurus, and Nigersaurus. Spinosaurus also had competition from other large theropods such as Carcharodontosaurus, Rugops, and Deltadromeus.

Spinosaurus has been made a pop culture icon recently in the 2001 movie Jurassic park 3 as the killer of the T-Rex. The dinosaur has also made appearances in several documentaries including BBC's Planet Dinosaur, Discovery's Monsters Resurrected, and National Geographic's Bizarre Dinosaurs. Spinosaurus was also featured in the video games Warpath: Jurassic Park for PS1, Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis for the PS2, and the most powerful boss in Jurassic: The Hunted for Xbox 360 and PS3. It is also featured on postage stamps in Angola, The Gambia, and Tanzania.