# Spinosaurus: a predator at the water’s edge > Few dinosaurs have had worse luck than Spinosaurus. Its first bones, found in Egypt, were destroyed in 1944, and its appearance had to be pieced together again over the decades that followed. The main points are now known. It lived in North Africa in the Cretaceous, had long, narrow jaws and a tall sail on its back, and fed on fish. Whether it caught them by swimming or by wading through the shallows is still argued over. - URL: https://www.dinoland.ai/guides/spinosaurus-ohotnik.html?lang=en - Language: en - Publication date: 2026-09-04 - All notes: https://www.dinoland.ai/guides/?lang=en - Plain-text version for AI: https://www.dinoland.ai/llms-guides/spinosaurus-ohotnik-en.txt - Species catalogue: https://www.dinoland.ai/llms-en.txt ## Short answer Few dinosaurs have had worse luck than Spinosaurus. Its first bones, found in Egypt, were destroyed in 1944, and its appearance had to be pieced together again over the decades that followed. The main points are now known. It lived in North Africa in the Cretaceous, had long, narrow jaws and a tall sail on its back, and fed on fish. Whether it caught them by swimming or by wading through the shallows is still argued over. ## At a glance - Size: about 14 m, 7–7.5 t (2022 estimate) - Distinctive feature: a tall sail on its back - Where it lived: North Africa: Egypt, Morocco, Niger - When it lived: about 100–94 million years ago - Diet: fish and probably other prey - Main area of debate: swimmer or shallow-water hunter ## An angler’s jaws Spinosaurus had a long, narrow snout and straight, conical teeth, just the thing for gripping slippery prey. Tyrannosaurus was its opposite, with a massive skull and thick, bone-crushing teeth. Jaws like these mark out a fish-eater, although a predator some 14 metres long would hardly have turned down other prey that came its way. Direct evidence comes from a relative, Baryonyx. Fish remains were preserved in the belly region of one of its skeletons. The menu, you might say, came with the find. ## What was the sail for? The sail was built on very tall spines rising from the vertebrae of the back. What covered them and how it all looked in life can’t be told in any detail from bones, because the soft tissue is gone. “Sail” is a handy nickname, nothing more. There are two ideas. The sail may have been a signboard by which animals recognised their own kind and chose mates, or it may have helped with heat exchange. The first got a boost from a 2026 find: a new species of Spinosaurus from Niger had a tall, scimitar-shaped crest on its head, and it is hard to see what that was for if not for signalling to others of its kind. An argument, not yet proof. ## Swimmer or heron? Dense bones and a paddle-like tail suggested that Spinosaurus dived after fish. The balance has now tipped the other way. In 2024 the bone-density calculations behind the diving idea were called into question, and in 2026 a second species, Spinosaurus mirabilis, was described from Niger. It lived about 95 million years ago, hundreds of kilometres from the sea, beside forest rivers. Its describers compare it to a giant heron fishing in water up to a couple of metres deep. The champions of underwater hunting have not given up, mind you. One thing is clear: Spinosaurus was a long way from being a true marine reptile like Mosasaurus. “Lived by the water” can mean very different things, and a fish caught near the bank doesn’t make a hunter a diver. ## Why it is drawn so differently The German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer described Spinosaurus in 1915 from bones found in Egypt. In 1944 those bones were destroyed in the bombing of Munich, and only the descriptions and drawings survived. After that the reconstruction was revised with each new find, and it changed most when the hind legs and tail became known. The current estimate, about 14 metres and 7.4 tonnes, is younger than many books on the shelf; the old figure of 16–18 metres is now considered too high. No wonder pictures from different decades seem to show different animals. ## Questions and answers ### Could Spinosaurus swim? It was closely tied to water, but what kind of swimmer it was is disputed. Studies from 2024–2026 point more to a predator that waded through the shallows and snatched fish like a heron than to one that chased them underwater. The debate is not closed. ### Who would win: Spinosaurus or Tyrannosaurus? Neither. They could never have met: tens of millions of years and an ocean lie between them, so that fight happens only in films. ### What was the sail for? Most probably for display to its own kind; heat exchange is also discussed. There is no definite answer. ### What did Spinosaurus eat? Mainly fish, as its jaws and teeth suggest. But there is no reason to think fish was all it ate. ## Species in this article - Spinosaurus aegyptiacus — https://www.dinoland.ai/species.html?lang=en&id=6 · https://www.dinoland.ai/llms-species/6-en.txt - Baryonyx walkeri — https://www.dinoland.ai/species.html?lang=en&id=25 · https://www.dinoland.ai/llms-species/25-en.txt - Tyrannosaurus rex — https://www.dinoland.ai/species.html?lang=en&id=1 · https://www.dinoland.ai/llms-species/1-en.txt - Mosasaurus hoffmannii — https://www.dinoland.ai/species.html?lang=en&id=27 · https://www.dinoland.ai/llms-species/27-en.txt ## Citation Field Journal — Dinosaur Encyclopaedia — https://www.dinoland.ai https://www.dinoland.ai/guides/spinosaurus-ohotnik.html?lang=en