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Meet Suchomimus tenerensis, a large, long-snouted spinosaurid theropod who prowled what is now Niger during the Early Cretaceous, roughly 125 million years ago.
If you imagine a T. rex that fell headfirst into a river ecosystem and decided fish were the future, you’re getting close.
This was no blunt-faced bone-crusher. Suchomimus had a narrow, crocodile-like snout lined with over a hundred slender, conical teeth perfectly suited for gripping slippery prey.
The fossils come primarily from the Elrhaz Formation in the Ténéré Desert of the Sahara. Today, it is an expanse of sand and heat shimmer. In the Early Cretaceous, it was a lush floodplain threaded with rivers, swamps, and seasonal lakes. Think mangroves, ferns, and conifers rather than dunes. It was discovered in the 1990s by a team led by Paul Sereno, and its name fittingly means “crocodile mimic.”
Suchomimus shared this watery paradise with a lively cast of characters. The sail-backed Ouranosaurus browsed on vegetation nearby.
The stocky, heavily armored Nigersaurus grazed low-growing plants with its astonishing vacuum-cleaner jaw. Small, nimble theropods darted through the undergrowth. And lurking in the water were giant crocodyliforms like Sarcosuchus imperator, the so-called “SuperCroc,” who could grow over 11 metres long. Imagine the tension at the riverbank. You go fishing and something bigger than your canoe is watching you fish.
Diet-wise, Suchomimus was likely a specialized piscivore, meaning fish were firmly on the menu. Its long jaws, studded with conical teeth and a subtle rosette at the tip, were built for snapping shut on struggling prey. The teeth lack the serrations you see in typical meat-slicing theropods, suggesting it wasn’t primarily designed for tearing chunks from large dinosaurs.
That said, it was still a 10–11 metre predator with powerful forelimbs and a thumb claw that could make an impression. Fish may have been the specialty, but opportunism is practically a dinosaur hobby. Small terrestrial prey would not have been safe if they wandered too close.
Hunting probably involved a patient, semi-aquatic strategy. Its long snout allowed it to dip into shallow water with minimal disturbance, and the conical teeth helped trap wriggling fish.
Some spinosaurids show evidence of sensory pits in their snouts, similar to modern crocodilians, suggesting they could detect movement in water. While direct evidence for this in Suchomimus is still debated, the resemblance is striking enough to make you wonder whether it had a similar trick up its sleeve. Or, more accurately, up its snout.
Unlike its later and more extreme cousin Spinosaurus, Suchomimus does not appear to have had a towering sail. Instead, it sported a low ridge of elongated neural spines along its back, perhaps forming a modest hump or ridge. Stylish, but not showy. Think understated riverbank chic.
One of the fun quirks of Suchomimus is its place in the spinosaurid family tree. It sits in the Baryonychinae, closely related to Baryonyx from England. Yes, England. So while one cousin stalked Early Cretaceous river systems in what is now West Africa, another was doing much the same in Surrey. Spinosaurids, it seems, were cosmopolitan anglers.
And then there are those arms. Strong, well-developed forelimbs with large claws, including a prominent thumb claw, suggest it could grapple with prey or perhaps haul itself along muddy banks. It was not the tiny-armed stereotype of later theropods.
If Suchomimus reached out to grab something, it likely succeeded.
In the fossil record, Suchomimus helps us understand the early evolution of spinosaurids before they became even more specialized. It represents a moment when dinosaurs were experimenting with ecological niches beyond the classic terrestrial predator role. River margins were not just crocodile territory. They were contested real estate.
So picture it: 125 million years ago, on a warm Cretaceous floodplain in what is now the Sahara, a long-snouted predator stands at the water’s edge.
Fish scatter beneath the surface. A distant Ouranosaurus snorts. Somewhere, a SuperCroc slides silently into the river.
And Suchomimus waits, patient and perfectly adapted, the elegant angler of the dinosaur world.
Not every theropod needed to rule the land. Some were quite happy ruling the river.
