Crested Spinosaurus Fossil Found Far from Tethys Sea

A new Spinosaurus species uncovered in northern Niger by Paul Sereno and colleagues appears to have been a wading predator of fish like its close relatives, but it lived as many as 1,000 kilometers inland from the Tethys Sea. The fossil find may represent a third phase of evolution for this group of massive, fish-eating dinosaurs, according to Sereno et al. The new species Spinosaurus mirabilis, uncovered in the central Sahara near Sirig Taghat ("no water, no goat" in Tamasheq, the local Berber language), lived with long-necked dinosaurs in a riparian habitat 100-95 million years ago. Sereno et al. suggest there were three phases of spinosaur evolution: a first phase that began in the Jurassic Period when the reptiles developed their elongated skull for fish-catching; a second Early Cretaceous Period phase that saw the spread of spinosaurs as predators all along the coast of the Tethys Sea; and a third phase where spinosaurs like S. mirabilis specialized as shallow water predators in northern Africa and South America. S. mirabilis was similar in size and skeletal form to Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, but was crowned with a unique scimitar-shaped bony crest that may have been used for visual display rather than locomotion or hunting.