Iberospinus

History

Some of the Iberospinus’s remains were once thought to be Baryonyx remains, another part of the remains was thought to have been from Suchosaurus. Later when paleontologists looked at these remains with a few other remains found in the same locality. They decided that they were probably the same dinosaur because the remains looked similar and there were no duplicate fossils. Now we know that there is no Portuguese Baryonyx.

Discovery

The Iberospinus was found in the Ibero Formation in Portugal. The remains of the dinosaur include a partial lower jaw, a few teeth, the center of a back vertebra, two damaged neural arches, bits of the pelvis, part of the shoulder blade, fifteen tail vertebrae, Some toe bone, and four partial ribs. Although this is not much it is enough to name a new dinosaur. Many dinosaurs are described by just a few bones.

CT Scans

The partial lower jaw of the Iberospinus was preserved pristinly and was CT scanned because of the amazing preservation. The CT scan revealed the neural vascular network in the Iberospinus’s jaw.

Portuguese Spinosaurids

Iberospinus is now the third spinosaurid found in the Iberian peninsula and the first from Portugal. The three spinosaurids from the Iberian peninsula are Vallibonavenatrix, Camarillasaurus, and now Iberospinus. This shows us that even though they may look similar they all probably filled different ecological niches so that they can live together without competition. There are also tons of different examples of this happening with spinosaurids like how Baryonyx and the newly discovered Ceratosuchops and Riparovenator all live in the same environment and location in the UK. This also happens in other countries.

Want to read the paper? Here it is https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0262614

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