Last month, BBC’s Science Focus reported on an “astonishingly” large dinosaur discovered in the Sahara Desert of Niger — a bus-sized behemoth with a crescent-shaped crest on its head that hunted far inland from its closest (and much smaller) fish-eating relatives:
Named Spinosaurus mirabilis – meaning ‘astonishing’ Spinosaurus in Latin – the giant lived in what is now Niger more than 95 million years ago, far from the coastal regions where similar fish-hunting dinosaurs are usually found.
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“This find was so sudden and amazing, it was really emotional for our team,” said Paul Sereno, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago.
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“I’ll forever cherish the moment in camp when we crowded around a laptop to look at the new species for the first time, after one member of our team generated 3D digital models of the bones we found to assemble the skull… That’s when the significance of the discovery really registered,” he added.
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The team suggested that this part of Niger was once a forested landscape criss-crossed by rivers, rather than a coastal environment.
“I envision this dinosaur as a kind of ‘hell heron’ that had no problem wading on its sturdy legs into two metres (6.5ft) of water but probably spent most of its time stalking shallower traps for the many large fish of the day,” Sereno said.
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You can read more of Sereno’s spinosaurus discovery here, in Science.