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These dragons from deep-time
are incredible creatures.

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They're bizzarre,

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they're beautiful,

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and there's very little
we know about them.

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These thoughts were going
through my head

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when I looked at the pages of
my first dinosaur book.

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I was about 5-years-old at the time,

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and I decided there and then


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that I would become a paleontologist.

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Paleontology allowed me 
to combine my love for animals

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with my desire to travel to 
far-flung corners of the world.

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And now, a few years later,

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I've led several expeditions 
to the ultimate far-flung


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corner on this planet,

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the Sahara.

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I've worked in the Sahara because
I've been on a quest

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to uncover new remains

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of a bizarre, giant predatory dinosaur

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called Spinosaurus.

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A few bones of this animal
have been found

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in the deserts of Egypt

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and were described about 100 years ago

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by a German paleontologist.


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Unfortunately, all his Spinosaurus 
bones were destroyed in WWII.

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So all we're left with are just
a few drawings and notes.

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Fromthese drawings,

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we know that this creature,

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which lived about 100 million years ago,

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was very big, it had tall spines 
on its back,

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forming a magnificent sail,

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and it had long, slender jaws,

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a bit like a crocodile,

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with conical teeth,

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that may have been used to catch
slippery prey, like fish.

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But that was pretty much 
all we know

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about this animal for the next 100 years.

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My fieldwork took me to the
border region

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between Morocco and Algeria,

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a place called the Kem Kem.

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It's a difficult place to work in.

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You have to deal with sandstorms,
and snakes and scorpians,

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and it's very difficult to find
good fossils there.

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But our handwork paid off.

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We discovered many incredible specimens.

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The largest dinosaur bone that had 
ever been found

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in this part of the Sahara.

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We found remains of giant
predetory dinosaurs,

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medium sized predatory dinosaurs,

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and seven or eight crocodile-like hunters.

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These fossils were deposited in a river system.

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The river system was also home 
to a giant, car-sized celocant.

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And the skies over the river-system
were filled with terosaurs,

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flying reptiles.

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It was a pretty dangerous place,

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not the kind of place you'd want 
to travel to

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if you had a time machine.

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So we're finding all these incredible
fossils of animals

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that lived alongside Spinosaurus,

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but Spinosaurus itself proved
to be very elusive.

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We were just finding bits and pieces

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and I was hoping that we'd find
a partial skelaton at some point.

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Finally, very recently,

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we were able to track down a dig site

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where a local fossil hunter found
several bones of Spinosaurus.

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We returned to the site,

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we collected more bones,

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and so after 100 years

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we finally had another partial skeleton

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of this bizarre creature.

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And we were able to reconstruct it.

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We now know that Spinosaurs
had a head

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a little bit like a crocodile,

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very different from other 
predatory dinosaurs,

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very different from the T-Rex.

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But the really interesting information
came from the rest of the skeleton.

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We had long spines,

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the spines forming the big sail.

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We had leg bones, we had skull bones,

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we had paddle shaped feet,

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very wide feet,

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again, very unusual,

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no other dinosaur has feet like this,

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and we think these may have been
used to walk on soft sediment,

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or maybe for paddling in the water.

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We also looked at the fine, microstructure
of the bone.

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The inside structure of Spinosaurus bone

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-- it turns out that they're very dense
and compact.

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And again, this is something we see

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in animals that spend a lot of time in the water,

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it's useful for buoyancy control in the water.

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We CT scanned all of our bones
and built a digital Spinosaurus skeleton.

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And we looked at the digital skeleton,

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we realized, that yes, this was a dinosaur
unlike any other.

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It's bigger than a T-rex, and yes,

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the head has "fish-eating" written all over it,

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but really the entire skeleton has 
"water-loving" written all over it:

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dense bone, paddle-like feet,
and the hind limbs are reduced in size,

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and again, this is something we see
in animals

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that spend a substantial amount of time

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in the water.

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So, as we fleshed out our Spinosaurus,

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I'm looking at muscle attachments
and wrapping our dinosaur in skin,

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we realize that we're dealing
with a river monster,

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a predatory dinosaur, bigger than a T-Rex,

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the ruler of this ancient river of giants,

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feeding on the many aquatic animals
I showed you early on.

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So this is really what makes this
an incredible discovery.

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It's a dinosaur like no other.

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And some people told me,

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"Wow, this is a once in a