Morocco: Discovery of First Aquatic Dinosaur Known in World

An international team of paleontologists recently discovered, in south-eastern Morocco, the remains of the world’s first known aquatic dinosaur, the “Spinosaurus aegyptiacus”, which is said to have lived during the period of the Cretaceous, some 100 million years ago.

The new fossils of the Moroccan Spinosaur, discovered in the site of Zrigat about thirty kilometers from the city of Erfoud, “provide the most convincing evidence to date about a dinosaur able to live and hunt in an aquatic environment”, explained to MAP Professor Samir Zouhri, of the geology department at the Faculty of Sciences of Ain Chock in Casablanca.

The research team made the first discovery of cranial and post-cranial remains of dinosaurs after nearly 70 years of paleontological work in the region, he noted.

Researchers are from the Hassan II University of Casablanca (Morocco), the University of Mercy (USA), the University of Portsmouth (England) and the Museum of Natural Sciences in Milan (Italy).

“This very particular dinosaur, Spinosaurus aegyptiacus, had a long tail of an unexpected and unique shape made up of extremely tall neural spines and elongated chevrons forming a large flexible organ in the shape of a fin capable of great lateral undulation,” said Professor Zouhri. 

The results of this discovery were published on April 29 in the prestigious scientific magazine “Nature” and were made into a documentary on the National Geographic Society website.