The Lair
Back to Articles and Musings
On December 4th of last year, a new species of a 100-million-year-old predatory dinosaur was unearthed by an international 18-person expedition, partially funded by the National Geographic Society. “Such a wonderful find can really open up new doors and bring out new ideas,” said Patti Carothers, an MV staff member who teaches biology.
The results of the find were displayed on Thursday, November 12 at a National Geographic Society conference. Expedition leader Paul Sereno said: “It was just sitting there, exposed over the course of centuries by wind and sand, waiting for anybody to discover it.”
The new species, which has been named Suchomimus tenerensis, for the Greek translation ‘crocodile mimic’, is 36 feet long and 12 feet high, with a weight estimated at 5 tons and a cavernous mouth crammed with large meat-hook-shaped teeth. These measurements make it at least as big as the average Tyrannosaurus, approximately equal in size to a modern day’s school bus. It’s 16-inch, hook-shaped thumb claws, while resembling those of a crocodile, were more similar to the fangs of a sabre-toothed tiger. It’s diet consisted primarily of fish.
The fossil skeleton, 70 percent complete, was found in a remote area of central Niger, Africa, when expedition member David Varricchio initially came across what appeared to be a spinosaur thumb. After the group expertly dug and sifted through tons of rock and dirt, they had gathered 400 pieces of bone, including the 4-foot-long forelegs with three claws on each limb.
During the mid-Cretaceous period, today’s forbidding Tenere Desert had been a lush land of ferns, broad rivers and abundant life, and it was there that the Suchomimus would have flourished as the dominant predator. It shared the land with 50-foot-long crocodiles, which had skulls up to 6 feet long, according to Sereno. Suchomimus is part of a spinosaur sub group, which until late last year included only three other splinter species. These spinosaurs are defined by their long snouts, narrow mouths and shallow skulls, in contrast to the theropods which possess serrated teeth and high skulls. Both of these sub groups belong to a group of bipedal carnivores which includes Tyrannosaurus and the Velociraptor. Sereno said, “He’s like a dinosaur, faced with extinction and trying hard to survive by exploring the evolutionary niche inhabited by today’s crocodiles.”
