#spinosaurs

We Three Spinosaurus

Top: Portrait of Spinosaurus aegyptiacus from the Kem Kem Beds of Morocco, based on FSAC-KK-11888

Middle: Portrait of the newly-describes Spinosaurus mirabilis from the Cenomanian Farak Formation of Niger

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology…

This time about something COMPLETELY different from sports:

Dinosaurs

Ok so I’m sure all u Dino nerds know about the new spinosaurid paper that suggested the Suchomimus and Cristatusaurus are now one of the same, which is fine, but what makes me so mad is that the Suchomimus name will be gone in favor of cristatusaurus.

Now, I will admit, suchomimus is one of my favorite dinosaurs so I have bias, however, I feel this is a case where cristatusaurus should be gone and instead called Suchomimus, because of not only the popularity Suchomimus has, but more specifically because

CRISTATUSAURUS IS A DUBIOUS TAXON KNOWN FROM VRY FRAGMENTARY REMAINS!!!

I know the rule in paleontology is which taxon came first, however Cristatusaurus is a barely known species which is known from very fragmentary remains and was only described literally 2 months before Suchomimus was described

Not to mention that there have been cases in the past where the first taxon did not become the one chosen as the name, such as with dimetrodon and T Rex, both were not the oldest described name for that species but due to their popularity, the name remained

I will be furious if we loose the name suchomimus just because the name Cristatusaurus technically came 2 months before, even though it was from fragmentary remains and a dubious taxon, while suchomimus is known from much more complete remains and has not been dubious (thought it has been referred to as another species of baryonyx at times in the past), and is a much more famous/popular name.

A new Spinosaurs was just discovered and it has a horn on it's head!