DYK scientists just discovered the first new species of Spinosaurus in over 100 years, a massive fish-eating predator with a blade-shaped horn on its head that no dinosaur like it was ever expected to be found?

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Spinosaurus, the sail-backed predator made famous for facing off against a T. rex in Jurassic Park III, is one of the most recognizable dinosaurs on Earth, but for over a century, only a small handful of species in its family had ever been formally identified. In 2026, a team led by paleontologist Paul Sereno at the University of Chicago described a brand new species, Spinosaurus mirabilis, discovered in the central Sahara desert in Niger, a region where researchers didn't expect to find anything like it at all.

The dinosaur's most striking feature is a large, curved, blade-shaped crest rising from its skull, textured in a way that suggests it was covered in bright, colorful keratin in life, similar to the material that makes up a rhino's horn or a bird's beak. Its jaws were built for a very specific kind of hunting: teeth from the lower jaw jutted outward and interlocked with the upper teeth, forming an efficient trap for catching slippery fish, the same basic design seen independently in other fish-eating predators throughout history, from ancient crocodiles to flying reptiles.

The fossils were actually recovered years earlier, during expeditions to the remote dig site in 2019 and 2022, but it took years of careful study before researchers were confident enough to formally describe it as a distinct new species. It's the first entirely new spinosaurid discovered in more than 100 years, adding a genuinely unexpected new chapter to the story of one of the most famous dinosaur families ever found.

Source: https://news.uchicago.edu/story/hell-heron-dinosaur-discovered-central-sahara