A fossilized skull and jawbones found in Niger belonged to a creature that had a large, bony crest atop its head and lived some 95 million years ago. Named Spinosaurus mirabilis, it is the first species of Spinosaurus to be identified in more than a century.The findings, which published February 19 in the journal Science, suggest that the prehistoric creature is a close relative of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, a giant fish-eating dinosaur with a sail across its back, first described in 1915 by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach.This discovery may answer a long-debated question among scientists about Spinosaurus species: Were they marine pursuit predators — animals that dove and swam after prey — or were they more like herons, wading at the shoreline and strategically striking fish in shallow water?AdvertisementAdvertisementPaul Sereno, lead author of the study and professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, said the new research points to Spinosaurus being what he calls a “hell heron” — a semiaquatic shoreline hunter with physical similarities to a wading bird, but at a terrifying scale.The crest of the newly identified spinosaurid was discovered in Niger. – Daniel Vidal/University of ChicagoAccording to the newly identified fossils, the creature likely had a long, narrow snout for snaring fish, a neck that could drive the head down in a stabbing motion and legs long enough to hunt in shallow water.When researchers compared head, neck and hind-limb proportions of the fossilized bones to an adult blue heron, the similarities suggested that Spinosaurus was adapted for stalking and striking along open shorelines and river edges.But the “smoking gun,” Sereno said, was that the fossils were found very far inland, suggesting that the creature lived and hunted along river systems and other shallow waterways, rather than the sea. Finding a giant, marine-adapted predator in the middle of the continent, he said, would be as unlikely as “finding a blue whale in Chicago.”A unique headpieceThe skull cast of …
