Spinosaurus aegyptiacus

Here is the final version of the 20th addition of my Acient Life series: #Spinosaurus aegyptiacus! Named for the enormous neural spines running along it's back to form what most have theorized to be a large sail or possibly a hump-like structure, Spinosaurus was first uncovered by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer in 1912 while he was in Western Egypt in the Bahariya Formation. The fragmented remains looked to be from a very large and unusual theropod, possibly one bigger than the famous Tyrannosaurus Rex, which had been discovered less than 10 years prior. Unfortunately the museum holding those remains was destroyed in a bombing run during World War II, but detailed drawings of the fragments did survive along with photos of the display. Over the course of a century of looking, very few specimens of Spinosaurus have been found and none of them were complete, it wasn't until a 2014 paper detailed new specmens that were found to show the hind legs of the animal, changing how we thought of it as a predator completely. Those legs were short, much shorter than other animals even close to it's size. Combined with oxygen isotope research that appeared to show similarities to animals like crocodiles and turtles, it looked now like the animal was most certainly adapted more for water than dry land; however a paper that came to my attention recently actually showed research that suggests that the animal could walk on land much better than first thought and that it's swimming prowess in deep water was less than ideal due very much to it's narrow body plan and the height of it's sail. It now looks like it was less adapted for the water than we thought, but it still most likely hunted on the shoreline or fished in shallow water. It doesn't change things much, but it does look like the animal was less of a croc-o-duck and more like a croc-o-bear, grabbing prey while wading into the shallows. Because of this new research, I decided to make the background water a little more symbolic. It's not impossible for the animal to have swam like this, but less likely than it was yesterday.

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