Suchomimus
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| Suchomimus Fossil range: Early Cretaceous |
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 Suchomimus tenerensis
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Suchomimus ("crocodile mimic") is a genus of large spinosaurid dinosaur with a crocodile-like mouth that lived 110 to 120 million years ago, during the middle portion of the Cretaceous period in Africa.
Unlike most giant theropods, Suchomimus had a very long, low snout and narrow jaws studded with some 100 teeth, not very sharp and curving slightly backward. The tip of the snout was enlarged and carried a "rosette" of longer teeth. The animal is reminiscent of crocodilians that eat mainly fish, such as the living gharial, a type of large crocodile with a very long, slim snout, from the region of India.
Suchomimus also had a tall extension of its vertebrae which may have held up some kind of low flap, ridge or sail of skin, as seen in much more exaggerated form in Spinosaurus. Detailed study shows that the specimen of Suchomimus was a subadult about 11 meters (36 ft) in length, but scientists think that it may have grown to about 12 meters (40 ft) long, approaching the size of Tyrannosaurus. The overall impression is of a massive and powerful creature that ate fish and presumably other sorts of meat (carrion, if naught else) more than 100 million years ago, when the Sahara was a lush, swampy habitat.
[edit] Etymology and Taxonomic History
Suchomimus has been placed among the spinosaurs, a group of predator-scavengers adapted for hunting fish but with frail bone structures (particularly their skulls) — especially when compared to other similarly sized therapods, like the tyrannosauridae — that to some paleontologists[citation needed] cast doubt on whether they were capable of killing large land animals without being fatally injured themselves. Apart from the back ridge, Suchomimus was very similar to the spinosaurid Baryonyx which also had strong forelimbs and a huge sickle-curved claw on its "thumb". And, as with Baryonyx, the claw was the first fossil part to be noticed by palaeontologists. Suchomimus was considerably larger than Baryonyx, but a few paleontologists have suggested that the latter might almost have been a juvenile of the former.
[edit] Discovery
After discovering new specimens of Carcharodontosaurus and Sarcosuchus, Chicago-based palaeontologist Paul Sereno and his team added a discovery in 1997. In the Sahara, near the Tenere Desert in Niger, they found fossils that represented about two-thirds of the skeleton of a huge meat-eater. This was named Suchomimus ("crocodile mimic") after the shape of its head.
[edit] External links
- Paul Sereno - Project Exploration Suchomimus Fact Sheet, at Project Exploration.
- Photos of Suchomimus Skeleton in Niger, at Project Exploration.
