Spinosaurus may have been the largest carnivore ever to walk the Earth.
Discovery, Appearance And Behaviour[]
At a jaw-dropping 17m long and weighing up to 11 tonnes, it was even larger than the mighty Tyrannosaurus. The story of this giant killing machine is a recent one. Although bones were found and described between 1912 and 1915 in Egypt, it's only in the last few years that a skeleton has been reconstructed properly. Earlier reconstructions had it look much more like an Allosaurus especially in terms of its skull, and making it much smaller as an animal overall. It would have been a formidable predator of North Africa's giant fish 100 Million Years Ago. The long narrow skull is very similar to modern crocodiles and Spinosaurus lived and hunted in water and on land, as crcodiles do today. The most distinguishing feature of this enormous dinosaur are the 1.5-2 metre neural spines running along its back. They formed a sail that could have been used to regulate heat, to deter enemies or to attract potential mates. Probably all
Jurassic Park III Spinosaurus
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three. Nevertheless Spinosaurus was driven to extinction when sea levels rose, and the rivers that it thrived in eventually turned to sea.
In Popular Culture[]
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In the documentry Monsters Ressurected spinosaurus was inaccurately shown to pick up a 26 foot rugops in it's 6 foot jaws, kill a carcharodontosaurus in one blow and tear open a saurosuhus. In the documentary Planet Dinosaur Spinosaurus is shown hunting a giant sawfish called Oncripistis.
