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The team followed a lead from a French geologist who found a tooth in the desert in the 1950s, crossed the Sahara by motorcycle with a Tuareg guide, and in November 2019, spotted bone fragments and a crest that no one could identify at the time
As published by Phys.org in February 2026, the discovery began with a 1966 monograph by French geologist Hughes Faure, which described a fossilized tooth found in Niger in the 1950s.
Faure had marked the location on an old map, without photographs or detailed figures. Just a coordinate in the desert.
Decades later, paleontologist Paul Sereno, professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago, followed this lead.
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Additionally, a local resident of the Tuareg ethnicity guided the team by motorcycle into the Sahara, after almost a full day’s journey through the sand.
When they arrived at the site in Jenguebi, in the Agadez Region, they found fragments of teeth, jawbones, and a strange bone structure on the desert surface.
No one understood what that crest was. Not at the time.
The pandemic delayed everything — but in 2022, the team returned and found two more crests
Between 2019 and 2022, the COVID-19 pandemic interrupted fieldwork.
However, when the team of 20 researchers returned to the site in 2022 with more equipment, the answer appeared.
Thus, they found two additional crests — and the comparison between the three pieces confirmed what paleontologists suspected: it was a completely new species.
The paper was published in the journal Science, as reported by EarthSky on February 19, 2026, with a title that includes the keyword: “New scimitar-crested Spinosaurus species from the Sahara caps stepwise spinosaurid radiation”.
In this sense, Spinosaurus mirabilis — a name that comes from the Latin “mirabilis,” meaning “astonishing” — became the first new species of the genus discovered in over 100 years.
The crest that looks like Elvis’s pompadour: the largest ever found on a dinosaur
The animal’s most impressive feature is its scimitar-shaped cranial crest — a blade of bone that curved skyward like a sword.
According to researchers, the crest was covered in keratin, the same protein found in human hair and nails.
Furthermore, the structure was internally vascularized and textured on the surface, indicating it functioned as a display ornament — likely to attract mates.
Scientists believe the crest was brightly colored in life, curving like a “lighthouse-shaped blade”.
Just as a fossil forgotten for 119 years recently surprised science, this crest waited millions of years under the Sahara sand to be recognized.
The comparison to Elvis’s pompadour isn’t just humor — it’s the most accurate analogy for an extravagant bone structure that shouldn’t exist on a predator of that size.
Why they called it the “hell heron” — and how it hunted
Paul Sereno didn’t choose the nickname by chance.
“I imagine this dinosaur as a kind of hell heron that had no problem venturing on its robust legs into two meters of water, but probably spent most of its time hunting in shallow traps for many large fish of the time,” said the paleontologist.
Indeed, the animal possessed interlocking teeth — where the teeth of the lower jaw fit between those of the upper, like a crocodile’s.
Above all, this dentition is typical of animals specialized in catching fish, a pattern also found in ichthyosaurs and pterosaurs.
The fossils were found in river sediments, confirming that the animal lived in a fluvial habitat, inland — and not on the coast, as previously believed about spinosaurs.
Therefore, the Sahara of 95 million years ago was not a desert. It was a tropical forest cut by wide rivers, where 8-meter predators hunted giant fish in shallow waters.
Eight meters long — and still young
The reference specimen (holotype) measured approximately 8 meters long — or 26 feet.
However, all collected bones belonged to subadult animals.
This means that the actual size of a mature adult is unknown — and likely larger.
Consequently, S. mirabilis may have been significantly larger than the 8 meters already documented.
Additionally, the team found fossils of two long-necked dinosaurs (sauropods) near the spinosaur remains, indicating that several large species coexisted in the same fluvial ecosystem.
What makes it different from the Spinosaurus you know from the movies
The most famous Spinosaurus is S. aegyptiacus, which appeared in the movie Jurassic Park III in 2001.
On the other hand, S. mirabilis differs in several important aspects.
The cranial crest of mirabilis is dramatically taller and scimitar-shaped. aegyptiacus had a more elongated and flat skull, similar to that of crocodiles.
Still, both share interlocking teeth and the habit of hunting fish. They are close relatives — but with completely different display strategies.
Like a fossil that lay forgotten in a drawer for 40 years and revealed an impossible dinosaur, S. mirabilis proves that the fossil record still holds enormous surprises in already explored locations.
What killed the hell heron — and what killed the green Sahara
Spinosaurus mirabilis became extinct approximately 94 million years ago.
According to the paper, the cause was a rapid rise in sea level and climate change that eliminated the shallow rivers where the animal hunted.
As the ocean advanced over the continent, the fluvial forests gave way to marine environments — and large terrestrial predators lost their habitat.
The Sahara itself continued to transform over millions of years, until it became the desert we know today — where the bones of an 8-meter predator waited in the sand, in silence, for a team that followed a 1966 map to find them.
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