It was a spine-tingling discovery.
Fossil hunters might’ve just made the find of a lifetime — the skull of a supersized dinosaur from “hell” with a swordlike horn protruding from its head, per a study published Thursday in the journal Science.
“This find was so sudden and amazing, it was really emotional for our team,” said study co-author Paul Sereno, a professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, Popular Science reported.
The newly-discovered carnivore, dubbed Spinosaurus mirabilis, was one of 55 fossils Sereno and his team unearthed during a 2022 trip to Niger that he dubbed the “expedition of the century,” ABC News reported.
According to the researcher, the primeval predator was a formidable-looking specimen, boasting a distinctive sail-finned back, and perhaps, most uniquely, a 20-inch scimitar-like bone jutting from its dome.
And, at 6-20 feet tall, S. mirabilis was roughly the same size as the mighty Tyrannosaurus Rex, which lived during the same time. In “Jurassic Park 3,” a Spinosaurus famously dispatches a T. rex by breaking its neck.
In real life, this gangly creature was more akin to an oversized egret, pursuing fish and other aquatic prey, which it trapped using its long snout and rows of interlocking teeth.
“I envision this dinosaur as a kind of ‘hell heron’ that had no problem wading on its sturdy legs into two meters of water but probably spent most of its time stalking shallower traps for the many large fish of the day,” said Sereno.
Coincidentally, the 2022 expedition was not the squad’s first encounter with this particular dino.
During a 2019 expedition, the team had uncovered several fossils — including a base of the crest and a bone they couldn’t place on a Spinosaur skeleton — but it wasn’t until this latest outing that they understood the significance of their find.
Sereno said that on day one, his colleague Dan Vidal had found “another crest that had a little bit more of the skull on it.”
“We realized instantly that not only was it a Spinosaurus, but that it was a new species,” he exclaimed. “People were literally crying. The skull of Spinosaurus is there.”
An analysis of the crest fossil led the team to speculate that appendage was brightly-hued and loaded with keratin.
Also notable was the fact that the lower jaws teeth jutted out between the upper set, making it the only Spinosaurid with this dental arrangement, which was previously thought to be unique to pterosaurs, marine ichthyosaurs, and semiaquatic crocodilians.
And that wasn’t the team’s only revelation. Unlike prior Spinosaurid remains, these fossils were located fairly deep inland — between 310 to 610 miles from the closest marine environments — leading the team to speculate that the fish-eater lived in a forested region zig-zagged by rivers.
This disproved popularly-held theories that the Spinosaur exclusively hunted coastal habitats.
“It’s not an aquatic animal. It is not a diver, it is not an adept ocean traveler,” said Sereno. “They had a bird-like skeleton that had a lot of air inside the skeleton and relatively stiff bodies and tails that were not very good for moving up and down.”
Ultimately, the watershed discovery presents more questions than answers.
In the future, researchers hope to glean more insight into its habitat and life during the Cretaceous epoch.
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