A rich horde of fossils from the Sahara has revealed that the largest known predator to ever walk the earth was also a superb swimmer, overturning the common view that dinosaurs were terrestrial beasts.
In a study published Thursday in the journal Science, an international research team described how it had uncovered the partial skeleton of a semiaquatic dinosaur, Spinosaurus, in Morocco. They estimate that the creature—not yet fully grown—measured 50 feet, at least nine feet longer than the largest documented Tyrannosaurus rex.
“We’ve resurrected a giant from deep time…a lost world buried for more than 95 million years,” said Nizar Ibrahim, a paleontologist at the University of Chicago and lead author of the study. “It is arguably the most enigmatic dinosaur” yet described.
