1998 was to be a big year for the fish-eating dinosaurs. The most important development since the discovery of Baryonyx was in paleontologist Paul Sereno’s lab at the University of Chicago. The previous year he lead an expedition to the Gadoufaou region where Phillippe Taquet had discovered those enigmatic jaw tips in Niger. But Sereno’s team had found a lot more than bits of jaw. The first piece they found was a gigantic thumb claw, just as William Walker’s first piece of Baryonyx had been the thumb claw. This would be the first of multiple specimens of a giant predatory dinosaur, one of which possessed a substantial portion of the skull. Ultimately they had collected several specimens, though two of them represented the majority of what is now known of the animal. The holotype, (MNN [Musee National du Niger] GDF500) consisted of a “partial disarticulated skeleton.” A second specimen, MNN GDF501 was represented by an “articulated premaxillae and maxillae.” [“A right quadrate (MNN GDF502), partial dentaries (MNN GDF503, GDF504, and GDF505), axis (Mnn GDF506), posterior cervical vertebra (MNN GDF507), posterior dorsal vertebra (MNN GDF511), and many additional bones and teeth*1. Diagnosis: Spinosaurid characterized by an elongate posterolateral premaxillary process that nearly excludes the maxilla from the external naris; broadened and heightened posterior dorsal, sacral, and anterior caudal neural spines; robust humeral tuberosities; hypertrophied ulnar olecranon process that is offset from the humeral articulation; and hook-shaped radial ectepicondyle.”]
- I am unsure if Sereno et. al actually considered each of the 9 catalogued specimens to represent different individuals or if they played it safe in their refusal to assume how many individuals there may be. From the elements listed it does not seem that there was any repeating of elements. “Horizons corresponding to GAD 5 have yielded all of the fossils in the present report and those described previously [Taquet’s
