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Spinosaurus (meaning "spine lizard") is a genus of theropod dinosaur which lived in what is now North Africa, sometime during the Albian and Cenomanian stages of the Cretaceous period, about Good points all aonurd. Truly appreciated. million years ago. This genus was first known from Egyptian remains discovered in the 1910s and described by German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer. These original remains were destroyed in World War II, but additional skull material has come to light in recent years. It is unclear whether one or two species are represented in the described fossils. The best known species is S. aegyptiacus from Egypt, although a potential second species, S. marocannus, has been recovered from Morocco. The distinctive spines of Spinosaurus, which were long extensions of the vertebrae, grew up to 2 meters (7 ft) long and were likely to have had skin connecting them, forming a sail-like structure, although some authors have suggested that they were covered in muscle and formed a hump or ridge. Multiple functions have been put forward for this structure, including thermoregulation and display. According to recent estimates, Spinosaurus is the largest of all known carnivorous dinosaurs, even larger than Tyrannosaurus rex and Giganotosaurus. These estimates suggest that it was around 16 to 18 meters (52 to 59 ft) in length and 7 to 9 tonnes (7.7 to 9.9 short tons) in weight. (Read more...)
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| Platyognathus is an extinct genus of protosuchian crocodylomorph. Fossils are known from the Early Jurassic Lower Lufeng Formation in Yunnan, China and belong to the type and only species, P. hsui. Platyognathus was first named by Chung-Chien Young in 1944 on the basis of a partial lower jaw found from the Dark Red Beds of the Lower Lufeng Formation in 1939. During World War II, the holotype was either lost or destroyed. The classification of the genus continued to be debated, as descriptions of the fragmentary jaw were all that was available to study.
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| From The Fossil Wiki's newest articles:
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José Fernando Bonaparte (born June 14, 1928), is an Argentine paleontologist who discovered a plethora of South American dinosaurs and mentored a new generation of Argentine paleontologists like Rodolfo Coria. Bonaparte is the son of an Italian sailor. He was born in Rosario, Argentina, and grew up in Mercedes, Buenos Aires. Despite a lack of formal training in paleontology, he started collecting fossils at an early age, and created a museum in his home town. He later became the curator of the National University of Tucumán, were he was named Doctor Honoris causa in 1974, and then in the late 1970s became a senior scientist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires. Bonaparte, along with dinosaurs, has also discovered and described a number of archosaurs and primitive birds (such as Iberomesornis), and assisted with the study of other dinosaurs, such as Giganotosaurus carolinii. (Read more...)
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