‘Hell heron’: The first new Spinosaurus species identified in over a century | CNN

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? Paul 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. According to the newly identified fossils, the creature likely ha