How we unearthed the spinosaurus

These dragons from deep-time
are incredible creatures.

They're bizzarre,

they're beautiful,

and there's very little
we know about them.

These thoughts were going
through my head

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

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

and I decided there and then

that I would become a paleontologist.

Paleontology allowed me
to combine my love for animals

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

And now, a few years later,

I've led several expeditions

to the ultimate far-flung
corner on this planet,

the Sahara.

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

to uncover new remains of a bizarre,
giant predatory dinosaur

called Spinosaurus.

A few bones of this animal
have been found

in the deserts of Egypt

and were described about 100 years ago

by a German paleontologist.

Unfortunately, all his Spinosaurus
bones were destroyed in WWII.

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

Fromthese drawings,

we know that this creature,

which lived about 100 million years ago,

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

forming a magnificent sail,

and it had long, slender jaws,

a bit like a crocodile,

with conical teeth,

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

But that was pretty much
all we know

about this animal for the next 100 years.

My fieldwork took me to the
border region

between Morocco and Algeria,

a place called the Kem Kem.

It's a difficult place to work in.

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

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

But our handwork paid off.

We discovered many incredible specimens.

The largest dinosaur bone that had
ever been found

in this part of the Sahara.

We found remains of giant
predetory dinosaurs,

medium sized predatory dinosaurs,

and seven or eight crocodile-like hunters.

These fossils were deposited in a river system.

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

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

flying reptiles.

It was a pretty dangerous place,

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

if you had a time machine.

So we're finding all these incredible
fossils of animals

that lived alongside Spinosaurus,

but Spinosaurus itself proved
to be very elusive.

We were just finding bits and pieces

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

Finally, very recently,

we were able to track down a dig site

where a local fossil hunter found
several bones of Spinosaurus.

We returned to the site,

we collected more bones,

and so after 100 years

we finally had another partial skeleton

of this bizarre creature.

And we were able to reconstruct it.

We now know that Spinosaurs
had a head

a little bit like a crocodile,

very different from other
predatory dinosaurs,

very different from the T-Rex.

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

We had long spines,

the spines forming the big sail.

We had leg bones, we had skull bones,

we had paddle shaped feet,

very wide feet,

again, very unusual,

no other dinosaur has feet like this,

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

or maybe for paddling in the water.

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

The inside structure of Spinosaurus bone

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

And again, this is something we see

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

it's useful for buoyancy control in the water.

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

And we looked at the digital skeleton,

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

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

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

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

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

and again, this is something we see
in animals

that spend a substantial amount of time

in the water.

So, as we fleshed out our Spinosaurus,

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

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

a predatory dinosaur, bigger than a T-Rex,

the ruler of this ancient river of giants,

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

So this is really what makes this
an incredible discovery.

It's a dinosaur like no other.

And some people told me,

"Wow, this is a once-in-a-lifetime
disovery.

There're not many things left
to discover in the world."

Well, I think nothing could be
further from the truth.

I think the Sahara's still full of treasures,

and when people tell me there are
no places left to explore,

I like to quote a famous dinosaur hunter,
Roy Chapman Andrews,

and he said, "Always, there has been
an adventure just around the corner.

And the world is still full of corners."

That was true many decades ago
when Roy Chapman Andrew

wrote these lines.

And it is still true today.

Thank you.

(Applause).