2009-07-16 22:39:08
In January 1983, William J. Walker, an amateur fossil hunter, found a huge fingernail sticking out of a clay pit in Surrey, in south-east England. When digging, dinosaur bones also turned up. Aware of the importance of the discovery, he informed paleontologists Alan J. Charig and Angela C. Milner of the British Natural History Museum. The excavations yielded an almost complete skeleton of a new dinosaur, which was described in 1986 and named after its discoverer with the name of Baryonyx walkeri (“Walker’s Heavy Nail”). It was a carnivorous dinosaur measuring eight meters in length and weighing two tons, although certain characteristics of the skeleton indicate that it had not yet reached its maximum size.
That same year, in Spain, in the Rioja town of Igea, a jaw fragment of the same species was found, but it was not described until 1995. Subsequently, teeth and part of a skull of Baryonyx in Salas de los Infantes, in the province of Burgos, and many of the fossil traces found in La Rioja and Teruel are attributed to Baryonyx or a close relative. A forearm and fingernail have been discovered on the Isle of Wight, in southern England.
Already at the beginning of the 19th century, teeth of Baryonyx in Surrey, but had been misidentified as belonging to a crocodile. The same thing happened with other teeth and jaw fragments found in Portugal at the end of the 19th century.
Baryonyx It is a carnivorous dinosaur of the spinosaurid family. It lived in Western Europe at the beginning of the Cretaceous period, between 130 and 125 million years ago. Its body is typical of a carnivorous dinosaur, although the neck and front legs are especially robust, and the first finger ends in a huge sickle-shaped nail 30 centimeters long. But its head is different: The jaws are long and narrow, similar to those of the gharial, a fish-eating crocodile from India, and it had 96 teeth, twice as many as its relatives. In the lower jaw there are 64 conical teeth, while in the upper one, possibly adorned with a small crest, 32 longer teeth are inserted. The jaw is broadened at its end, spatula-like, with the top bent in the same way as in crocodiles, helping to prevent elusive prey, such as a fish, from escaping.
The characteristics of the mandible indicate that Baryonyx It was a piscivorous dinosaur: it ate fish. The discovery of fish scales Lepidotes attacked by gastric acids in the stomach region of the Baryonyx Fossil from England confirms that idea. In addition, bone fragments of the herbivorous dinosaur have been found along with the scales. Iguanodon. The long, narrow jaws of Baryonyx they are too fragile to hunt such large prey, so it is likely that this dinosaur supplemented its diet with carrion.
Some paleontologists believe that Suchomimus Tenerensisanother 11- to 12-meter-long spinosaurid discovered in the Ténéré desert of Niger in 1998, may simply be a larger specimen of Baryonyx.
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