Acrylics and inks on cardboard.
Due to the increase in popularity of this enigmatic gigantic theropod I
have ventured this reconstruction trying to give an alternative to those
massive monsters with pseudo crocodile heads we are seeing lately in
toys and popular movies.
Not very much is known from Spinosaurus. Most of the material collected
by the German paleontologist Ernst Stromer in 1934 from the Baharija
Formation of Baharije(Egypt), including enormously elongated back
spines that formed a 'sail' up to more than1.5 meters tall, was
destroyed during the second World War. Fortunately. technically accurate
drawings were made and the material was preserved for posterity!
Recently more material has been dug out from the same quarries in Egypt
and other sites in Africa, unfortunately not the key missing elements
like the long spines or limbs. The new material consists mostly in bits
of skull and many teeth. Through the years, recent work of Angela
Milner, Dale Russell, Jack Bailey, Paul Sereno and Josh Smith (among
others)has helped us to visualize this most bizarre of theropods.
Lacking enough material to make a full accurate reconstruction we have
to compare it with its relatives. Being a close relative to dinosaurs
like Baryonyx and Suchomimus, we can safely imagine it with powerful
arms and sizeable claws, being digit one the biggest. Nick Longrich
visualizes them as the perfect bear-like, raking-fishing devices. The
elongated spines have been a matter of contention: most visualize it as
a 'sail' others as a buffalo-like 'hump', although I don't see evidence
for strong muscle attachments. The skull was, despite its enormous size,
rather delicately constructed and narrow with its baryonyx-like famous
kinked snout. The shape of its jaws and the many different stout,
conical teeth made it also a perfect fishing animal... but I visualize
it here more like an oversized pelican rather than actually an
extrapolation of the gavial or crocodile design.
In the picture, Spinosaurus has just made a really big catch: A sizeable
coelacanth.
