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posted by malcolm
on Friday March 05, @09:10AM
from the Neal-Robbins dept.
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Suchomimus was a type of dinosaur that lived about 100 million years ago, which was during the latter part of the Cretaceous period. It was a carnivore and walked upright. This creature was 36 feet long and 12 feet tall. Each hand had three fingers. A 1 foot long sickle like claw was on one finger of each hand. Suchomimus had a crocodile-like head with 100 pointed, razor sharp teeth. The end of the jaw was tipped with an extra chin-like projection. This part had the largest teeth.
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Suchomimus was a type of dinosaur that lived about 100 million years ago, which was during the latter part of the Cretaceous period. It was a carnivore and walked upright. This creature was 36 feet long and 12 feet tall. Each hand had three fingers. A 1 foot long sickle like claw was on one finger of each hand. Suchomimus had a crocodile-like head with 100 pointed, razor sharp teeth. The end of the jaw was tipped with an extra chin-like projection. This part had the largest teeth.
Suchomimus had a sail like structure on its back. This was most likely used to regulate its body temperature. That would be to absorb heat when the surrounding temperature was cold and release heat when it was hot. It's an interesting point that two early reptiles of the Permian period called Dimetrodon and Edaphosaurus also had this feature.
Suchomimus belonged to a family of dinosaurs called Spinosaurids. They included:
Angaturama
Baryonyx
Irritator
Siamosaurus
Spinosaurus
Fossils of Suchomimus have been found in the Sahara desert portion of the country of Niger. During the Cretaceous period, that area was lush and fertile. Tropical forests covered much of the terrain and wide rivers ran across it. Fossils of crocodiles, fish, and giant turtles have been found there.
Spinosaurus was as large as Tyrannosaurus Rex. The two were fairly closely related, but they were not extremely close kin. They have these points in common on the scale of taxonomy:
Order: Saurischia
Suborder: Theropoda
However, they were of different families. Tyrannosaurus Rex was of the family called Tyrannosauridae, whereas Suchomimus belonged to the Spinosaurid family.
Spinosaurus is a genus. The type species is Suchomimus terensis.
Sincerely,
Neal Robbins
P.S. The crocodile-like head of Suchomimus has prompted some paeleontologists to say that it was trying hard to be a crocodile. Fish were a major part of the diet of Suchomimus. The three fingered hands were well suited to grabbing fish. And the teeth were ideally made for chewing on fish. This brings it to another point of difference between Suchomimus and Tyrannosaurus Rex. Tyrannosaurus Rex was not a fishing sort of dinosaur. It had only two fingers on each hand and was not well equipped for grabbing fish.
P.P.S. Suchomimus was probably not a dinosaur who looked for trouble, but because of its size, it could do pretty well in a fight.
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