Up until recently, it was believed that the dinosaurs resided exclusively on land. The latest research indicates that Spinosaurus, the mammoth dinosaur that was featured in the 3rd part of the Jurassic Park movie franchise, may have actually been a huge aquatic animal.
Spinosaurus ( Egyptian spine-lizard), the biggest carnivorous dinosaur on record, lived in what now is North Africa. It was found to be present during Cenomanian to Turonian stages of the late Cretaceous period. Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, a genus of spinosaurid dinosaur, was first described by the German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer in 1915 from Egyptian remains but the original remains were destroyed in World War II.
Nizar Ibrahim, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Detroit Mercy, in 2014, first made the case for a semi-aquatic Spinosaurus but others who studied the fossil disagreed with him. Then, earlier this year, Ibrahim and his colleagues found a fossilised Spinosaurus tail which was indeed a game-changer. The discovery showed that this beast, out of all the predators spent at least some time swimming in the water. More doubts were cleared with the newly found fossils in Morocco.
Ibrahim and his colleagues are arguing that the spinosaur spent much of its life in water and that it was not just a semi-aquatic creature. Nizar Ibrahim, who is also a visiting researcher at the University of Portsmouth said that it was basically a dino that was trying to build a fishtail and that these creatures were involved in water activities.
Analysis on more than thousand dinosaur teeth, recently discovered by the researchers at the University of Portsmouth in the ancient river bed in Morocco, says that these creatures were longer and heavier than an adult Tyrannosaurus rex. This 50 foot long, seven-ton Spinosaurus is found to have a sail on its back and a tail of aquatic adaptation which has never been observed in other large dinosaurs. The proof of currently analysed tail gave a firm point that these creatures were capable of proficient aquatic movement.
The team who was behind this discovery assumes that the predator lived in the Kem Kem river system which flowed through the Sahara Desert about 100 million years ago. As the new discovery turns out to be a mind-blowing one, the hope of establishing Morocco’s first national museum of natural history have taken a step higher and also to inspire people to wonder about the history of nature.
Reference: University of Portsmouth
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