Introduction

Spinosaurus has recently been made famous by the film Jurassic Park III, part of the lucrative dinosaur film franchise started by Steven Speilberg based on the book by Michael Crichton. As the films increasingly drifted away from the books' interesting science fiction premise and natural-history conjecture they sought increasingly greater spectacle and weaker narrative. Part of this law of diminishing returns meant two things: More interesting dinosaurs were needed in the films to keep them fresh, and they needed to behave more sensationally. So when Jurassic Park III came along, something bigger and better than tha T Rex was needed to capture the imagination of the audience and so the remarkable-looking Spinosaurus was brought back to life. Not only was this animal shown to be larger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex but it was more aggressive, quicker and stronger. Gone were the representations of these creatures as curious, realistic animals because now it was very much a monster movie.

In the way of the previous films, the fiction of Jurassic Park has made this animal different to its real-life counterpart however the genuine article was no less interesting than its fictional film cousin. It was an interesting note that in the film of Jurassic Park III, Sam Neil's character of Dr Grant talks of how these are not really ressurrected prehistoric animals, they are theme park attractions. It raises the point that his job is not actually "extinct" as they joked in the first Jurassic Park film (also available on video and DVD from all good stockists! See links on top right of page) because the creatures of Jurassic Park are not real dinosaurs, they have been engineered. Its also regonition of the fact that these creatures shown in film are innaccurate in many ways and the fact they're purely for entertainment is true on many levels!

The Evidence

Fragmentary dentary, vertebrae, hindlimb elements, teeth [destroyed]
Neck vertebra, fragmentary dentaries, dorsal neural arch

Spinosaurus was originally described in 1915 from a discovery made in North Africa by Stromer's German team. Sadly, an attack by allied forces in World War II destroyed this excellent specimen.

It it generally felt that the the known Spinosaur material is from a sub-adult. It is for this reason that the estimates of its size vary but generally suggest that it was the same length as T rex.

A large Spinosaurus skull, rumoured to be eight feet long, has turned up more recently. If the measurement is correct, this would suggest that the complete animal was longer than any known Giganotosaurus or T. rex, but there are no reliable sources yet.

What was Spinosaurus like?

Spinosaurus was thought to be as long as Tyrannosaurus rex but with a more slender body. Its most striking feature was its tall skin "sail" down its back, held aloft by bony spines. These were about 1.6 metres tall.

The new evidence and the records of the original find suggest that the animal had a long, low skull with a kinked snout very similar to Baryonxy.

The spines of the animal were very flat and bladelike. To this day, no other dinosaur specimen has been found with such extremely tall neural spines.

What was the function of Spinosaurus' Sail?

Although classically thought to be a device for regulating body temperature I, personally, don't subscribe to this theory. As a means for heating the blood its very clumsy. It also implies that this dinosaur was cold-blooded and would have had to carefully position itself in the sunlight. If this was true it might have severely overheated if it fell asleep in the afternoon sun!

My belief is that, as with all known peripheral adornments, it was sexual. It would have been used to make the animal look bigger both for attracting a mate and frightening opponents. Perhaps the skin across the surface had such a profusion of blood vessels that it could "flush" its colour, creating vivid patterns that were alluring to the females. A Peacock's tail plume is a modern-day comparison.

Many thanks to Steve Coombs

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