According to the LA Times, an unusual fossil whose bones were found across two continents could be the first known semi-aquatic dinosaur. Known as the Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, the 95-million-year-old dinosaur measured 9 feet longer than a Tyrannosaurus rex, making it one of the largest predatory dinosaurs to walk the earth.

Paleontologist Nizar Ibrahim first discovered Spinosaurus' fossils while traveling in 2008 in Morocco. The Washington Post reports that a fossil hunter came up to Ibrahim with information. "He heard that I was a guy looking for dinosaur fossils, and he said he had something for me to look at... He really didn't know what he had."

Ibrahim was shown a groundbreaking discovery: a chunk of finger bone and spine from what would later be identified as Spinosaurus. Ibrahim took the find to a university in Casablanca. The New York Times reports that the next year, Ibrahim was visiting colleagues at the Milan Natural History museum when he was shown bones from Spinosaurus aegypticus, a strange looking predatory dinosaur thought to be larger than Tyrannosaurus rex.

When he saw the exhibit, he saw familiarities between the fossils at the museum and the fossils he had chanced upon earlier. It turned out that the pieces from the exhibit were found 1,200 miles away from the pieces he identified, and were part of the same skeleton.

Further research on the complete fossil collection found that Spinosaurus ate sharks, had a huge crocodile-like snout that enabled it to sense movement in water, and had huge conical teeth built for chewing fish the size of cars. It also had a signature feature - huge dorsal spines that created a sail on its back, making it visible even while underwater. Its feet were wide, flat, and possible webbed, and its center of mass was pushed very far forward.

Paleontologist Paul Sereno commented, "It was not a balancing, two-legged animal on land... It would have been something very peculiar," conveying the strangeness of Spinosaurus' semi-aquatic nature. Lindsay Zanno, a paleontologist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, stated, "I really didn't expect there to be this much compelling evidence of an animal adapted for life in the water - I find the proportions of this animal to be really bizarre."