A new Spinosaurus species uncovered in northern Niger by Paul Sereno and colleagues appears to have been a wading predator of fish like its close relatives, but it lived as many as 1,000 kilometers inland from the Tethys Sea. The fossil find may represent a third phase of evolution for this group of massive, fish-eating dinosaurs, according to Sereno et al. The new species Spinosaurus mirabilis , uncovered in the central Sahara near Sirig Taghat (“no water, no goat” in Tamasheq, the local Berber language), lived with long-necked dinosaurs in a riparian habitat 100-95 million years ago. Sereno et al. suggest there were three phases of spinosaur evolution: a first phase that began in the Jurassic Period when the reptiles developed their elongated skull for fish-catching; a second Early Cretaceous Period phase that saw the spread of spinosaurs as predators all along the coast of the Tethys Sea; and a third phase where spinosaurs like S. mirabilis specialized as shallow water predators in northern Africa and South America. S. mirabilis was similar in size and skeletal form to Spinosaurus aegyptiacus , but was crowned with a unique scimitar-shaped bony crest that may have been used for visual display rather than locomotion or hunting.
Science
New scimitar-crested Spinosaurus species from the Sahara caps stepwise spinosaurid radiation
19-Feb-2026