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A team of paleontologists from the University of Chicago descended upon a remote area of the Sahara desert in Niger in 2019. Eventually, they stumbled upon a strange bone peeking out from the golden sand. At first, the researchers believed the bone was a dinosaur vertebra, but that assumption quickly dissolved once they realized it was a curved, blade-like crest, not unlike a unicorn horn. In 2022, the team returned to the site, only to unearth more fossils from what appeared to be the same creature. Now, the team has revealed that these bones actually belonged to a completely new species of dinosaur.
“This find was so sudden and amazing, it was really emotional for our team,” Paul Sereno, professor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, said in a statement. “I’ll forever cherish the moment in camp when we crowded around a laptop to look at the new species for the first time.”
A recent paper published in Science details the 2019 and 2022 expeditions to the Sahara, where the 20-person research group ultimately found Spinosaurus mirabilis, the first new spinosaurid species discovered in more than a century. S. mirabilis, whose name stems from the Latin word for “astonishing,” once stood as an enormous, semiaquatic predator, complete with interlocking rows of teeth perfect for catching slippery fish. Based on its surface texture and interior vascular canals, the dinosaur’s crest was also most likely sheathed in keratin, rendering it vibrant and colorful as it towered into the air. Combined with the creature’s 6-foot sail running along its back, the crest only added to the S. mirabilis’s dramatic silhouette.
“I envision this dinosaur as a kind of ‘hell heron’ that had no problem wading on its sturdy legs into 2 meters of water but probably spent most of its time stalking shallower traps for the many large fish of the day,” Sereno explains.
Compared to Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, another Spinosaurus species that was named in 1915, S. mirabilis boasts a larger crest, has a more elongated snout, longer hind limbs, and teeth that are more spread out from one another. Despite its size, the S. mirabilis crest was likely too fragile to use while hunting, leading researchers to believe its purpose was related to sexual or territorial competition.
“It’s sort of signaling to other members of your species, whether it’s ‘Hey, I would make a great mate,’ or ‘Get out of my territory. I’m the biggest, baddest dude on the block,’” Matt Lamana, a paleontologist not involved with the study, told National Geographic.
Sereno echoed the sentiment in Reuters: “It’s about love and life—attracting a mate, defending your hot feeding shallows. What else could be more important?”
According to the study, the hunt for S. mirabilis began with a single sentence in a monograph from the 1950s. In the excerpt, a French geologist mentioned finding a saber-shaped dinosaur tooth at a small site in Niger. “No one had been back to that tooth site in over 70 years,” Sereno adds. “It was an adventure and a half wandering into the sand seas to search for this locale and then find an even more remote fossil area with the new species.”
The discovery offers essential insight into the Spinosaurus species, how it developed throughout time, and, perhaps most significantly of all, its geographic presence. That the S. mirabilis fossils were unearthed in riverbank sediments suggests that the creature lived in forests that lined these banks, strengthening theories that it waded—rather than fully submerged itself—in water.
“I think the argument is coming together functionally and from the fieldwork that these were giant, heron-like animals displaying and clamping down on fish,” Sereno asserts. Aside from this, S. mirabilis may also shed critical light upon the origins of the Spinosaurus in general.
“We know them from North Africa, and we knew their presence in Brazil. But what happened in between those locations, because there’s quite a stretch of continent,” Daniel Vidal, a postdoctoral researcher at UChicago, told ABC News. “So, this discovery really helps to see that their distribution might have been unbroken and probably tells a lot of how these animals migrated from one area to the other.”
Paleontologists have discovered a new species of dinosaur.
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Called Spinosaurus mirabilis, its discovery is due to an unusual crest fossil unearthed in the Sahara desert.
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Now, to complement the information shared in the study, paleoartists have released renderings of the newly discovered S. mirabilis.
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They’ve even provided 3D renderings of the prehistoric giant.
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Sources: ‘Hell-heron’ dinosaur discovered in the central Sahara; This odd-looking new Spinosaurus is reviving an age-old debate; Scientists discover new dinosaur species deep in the Sahara Desert; Fossils of a new species of huge dinosaur Spinosaurus unearthed in Niger
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