NAME

Meaning - Suchomimus means “crocodile mimic”
Pronounced - SOOK-o-MIME-us
Named By - Sereno, Beck, Dutheil, Gado, Larsson, Lyon, Marcot, Rauhut, Sadleir, Sidor, Varricchio, G. P. Wilson, and J. A. Wilson
When Named - 1998
DIET

Carnivore (meat-eater) and piscivore (fish-eater)
SIZE

Length - 36 ft (11 m) long (subadult)
Height - 12 ft (3.6 m) tall at the hips
Weight - 5 tons
WHEN IT LIVED

Middle Cretaceous period, about 110-100 million years ago
WHERE IT LIVED

Fossils have been found in the Tenere region of the Sahara Desert in Niger, Africa.
FOSSILS

David Varricchio first spotted the huge thumb claw, which led to the discovery of the 400-piece fossil. One incomplete skeleton (including a partial skull) has been found.
CLASSIFICATION
  • Kingdom Animalia (animals)
  • Phylum Chordata (having a hollow nerve chord ending in a brain)
  • Class Archosauria (diapsids with socket-set teeth, etc.)
  • Order Saurischia - lizard-hipped dinosaurs
  • Suborder Theropoda - bipedal carnivores
  • Tetanura - advanced theropods with three fingers
  • Family Spinosauria - huge Cretaceous period predators with crocodile-like jaws and neural spines forming a sail.
  • Genus Suchomimus [Suchomimus may be the same genus as Baryonyx]
  • Species S. tenerensis (type species named by Sereno, Beck, Dutheil, Gado, Larsson, Lyon, Marcot, Rauhut, Sadleir, Sidor, Varricchio, G. P. Wilson and J. A. Wilson, 1998)
INTERESTING FACTS

Suchomimus had a two-foot-high sail on its lower back. This dinosaur had a very long snout [1.2 m (4 ft) long] and huge, foot-long thumb claws - adaptations to catch fish.
LINKS

Another page on Suchomimus.