By Antonia Delfin Cuba, age 11
Recently I went to an event called “Night at the Museum” at the Natural History Museum. We got a tour of the dinosaur skeletons, and there were some pretty cool and weird-looking dinosaurs. Kids like me like dinosaurs and are interested in them and want to learn more or discover new dinosaurs.
Now there’s a newly discovered species of dinosaur: a new Spinosaurus species that has been unearthed from the Saharan desert. According to NPR, the authors of the study of the new species “estimate that Spinosaurus mirabilis lived about 95 million years ago during the Cretaceous period.” The bones came from Niger, thousands of kilometers away from any ocean. The species lived in the central Sahara desert near some marshy areas.
Paul Sereno, the paleontologist that discovered the Spinosaurus, told NPR, “I’ll forever cherish the moment in camp when we crowded around a laptop to look at the new species for the first time.”
Spinosaurus mirabilis means “wonderful spine lizard.” It had a brightly colored crest and was as large as a school bus! NPR reports, “The tail of Spinosaurus is comparable to fully aquatic or largely aquatic animals alive today,” as paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim explained. ScienceAlert describes that the weird part on the top of the dinosaur’s head is called a “scimitar-shaped crest.” People think it sure is handsome, but exactly what purpose it served remains a mystery.
