The 2001 film Jurassic Park III revealed to the world one of the most peculiar—yet absolutely fearsome—dinosaurs to ever walk the planet. The main antagonist dinosaur for the movie was the Spinosaurus: a giant meat-eating dinosaur that’s bigger than the famous Tyrannosaurus rex from the prequel movies. While this fearsome predator is locked in fiction, the actual dinosaur it’s based on is far from fictitious—and the truth, in this case, may be even stranger.
The dinosaur clade Spinosauridae has its name derived from Latin for “spine lizard;” this very feature can be seen on nearly all end-members of this group, which include the movie-famous Spinosaurus. These carnivorous theropods are known from several fossils scattered across Africa, Europe, South America, and Asia. Common features included crocodile-like skulls with long snouts and conical teeth; what is perhaps most famous, though, is its namesake “spine”—a vertically-extended neural spines in the vertebrae of several species, which may have been covered with skin or a hump.
The spinosaurids contain what may be the actual largest land predator to ever walk the Earth: the dinosaur Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, which may have reached lengths of up to 16 m (52 ft) and may have weighed as much as 7.5 metric tons (8.3 short tons). S. aegyptiacus is nearly a full 4 m (13 ft) longer than the longest complete T. rex specimen, which sat at around 12.3 m (40 ft). This true behemoth of a reptile prowled the semi-aquatic biomes of what is now Egypt.
However, it appears that the Spinosaurid family is bound to keep growing as we find more and more fossils of its cousins and ancestors; that certainly seems to be the case now, with a find of not one but two potential new spinosaurids from the Wessex Formation in the Isle of Wight, an island between 3-8 km (2-5 mi) off the coast of Hampshire, England. The study which found this new pair of predators was led by the University of Southampton, and was published in the journal Scientific Reports.
Two new spinosaurids were identified from fragmentary fossils obtained from Chilton Chine, an area on the southwest coast of the Isle of Wight. The incomplete remains of two new spinosaurids were identified by fossil collectors: Ceratosuchops inferodios and Riparovenator milnerae, both of which were dated to the Early Cretaceous period at around 125 million years old. The two dinosaurs’ remains may have been fragmentary at best, but scientists estimated their lengths to reach up to 9 m (30 ft), with their skulls possibly reaching a meter (3 ft) long.
The last-discovered spinosaurid in the United Kingdom (UK) was Baryonyx walkeri, which was found in the Weald Clay Formation of Surrey, England, back in 1983.
University of Southampton Ph.D. student and study lead author Chris Barker explained: “We found the skulls of [C. inferodios] and [R. milnerae] to differ not only from [B. walkeri], but also one another, suggesting the UK housed a greater diversity of spinosaurids than previously thought.”
David Hone, co-author and paleontologist from the Queen Mary University, added: “It might sound odd to have two similar and closely related carnivores in an ecosystem, but this is actually very common for both dinosaurs and numerous living ecosystems.” It remains unclear, however, if these two new dinosaurs ever lived at the same time as dinosaurs like B. walkeri, as their fossils were believed to have fallen off a cliffside prior to being found, meaning any rough fossil dating based on the age of the rocks around them may prove inaccurate.
The authors gave C. inferodios a specific name which means “hell heron.” They did so in the belief that these spinosaurids functioned like what they call “riverbank predators,” or how herons hunt near riverbanks in search of easy prey in shallow water. “With a series of low horns and bumps ornamenting the brow region, the name of [C. inferodios] also refers to the predator’s likely hunting style, which would be similar to that of a heron. […] Herons famously catch aquatic prey around the margins of waterways but their diet is far more flexible than is generally appreciated, and can include terrestrial prey too.”
“A palaeogeographic reconstruction suggests a European origin for Spinosauridae, with at least two dispersal events into Africa,” the authors said. To them, their find adds proof of a possible European origin for the spinosaurids: they funneled first into areas like what is now Niger to lead to dinosaurs like Suchomimus tenerensis; they then entered areas like ancient Egypt second, where the aforementioned S. aegyptiacus would later on evolve and be found in.
This does, however, pose more questions to paleontologists. The regions of Asia, Europe, and North America were still loosely connected at the time; true enough, spinosaurid fossils have been found in areas in Asia and Europe, much like in this study. However, paleontologists have yet to find clear evidence of any spinosaurids in North America, despite the fact that other dinosaur species didn’t seem to have the same problem, and spread to North America just fine. Said Tom Holtz, a University of Maryland paleontologist who’s unrelated to the study: “There’s nothing really super-special that might have excluded them—so yeah, this is a curious fact […] All we need to do is discover one tooth.”
Despite the new findings seemingly leading to more questions, Barker remains positive of the situation, as his recent find is a fulfillment of a childhood dream born from a fascination with carnivorous dinosaurs from a very young age. “Being able to study something which as a kid you almost idolized—I recognize how privileged I am today.”
(For more dinosaur finds from this year, check out the discovery of Australotitan cooperensis in Australia, followed by the discovery of Ulughbegsaurus uzbekistanensis in Uzbekistan.
References
- Barker, C. T., Hone, D. W. E., Naish, D., Cau, A., Lockwood, J. A. F., Foster, B., Clarkin, C. E., Schneider, P., & Gostling, N. J. (2021). New spinosaurids from the wessex formation (Early cretaceous, uk) and the european origins of spinosauridae. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 19340. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97870-8
- de Lazaro, E. (2021, September 30). Paleontologists Discover Two New Species of Spinosaurid Dinosaurs. Sci-News. http://www.sci-news.com/paleontology/ceratosuchops-inferodios-riparovenator-milnerae-10121.html
- Greshko, M. (2021, October 1). Fierce “hell heron” dinosaur puts new wrinkles in Spinosaurus origin story. National Geographic. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/fierce-hell-heron-dinosaur-puts-new-wrinkles-in-spinosaurus-origin-story
