New Spinosaurus mirabilis described from Niger Sahara fossils

A new spinosaur has been named from fossils recovered in Niger’s Sahara—an announcement dressed up as scientific romance but also an example of how “research” functions when the field site is effectively a regulated resource concession.

El País reports that Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago and an international team have described Spinosaurus mirabilis in a Science paper, based on material found in 2022. The animal lived roughly 95 million years ago, reached about 13 meters, and carried a scimitar-shaped cranial crest that researchers suspect was brightly colored—another billboard feature alongside the group’s famous dorsal sail.

The paper’s comparative analysis of skull morphology, neck proportions and hind limbs across 43 living and extinct predators supports a more terrestrial, wading piscivore model: spinosaurids fished in shallow water like herons rather than behaving as fully aquatic, crocodile-like divers. The team also argues the inland context weakens claims that these theropods were entirely aquatic.

The paleontology is interesting; the production pipeline is more revealing. El País notes the expedition ran for three months in extreme conditions, with temperatures up to 50°C, limited water dependent on a truck, and risks ranging from scorpions and malaria to theft and political instability. A 2023 coup disrupted fossil transport—showing that the state can interrupt supply chains at will.

Funding, too, was not a triumph of institutional certainty. Sereno reportedly relied on an anonymous donor and small private contributions after many scientific institutions balked at financing what El País calls a risky undertaking. Universities and state agencies talk about “global priorities,” but it took private money—plus a 68-year-old researcher’s stubbornness—to move the project from planning to execution.

Then comes the part that rarely makes the glossy press packet: security. To deter “treasure hunters,” local authorities provided an armed guard of 64 men to escort the team, El País reports. That is not a footnote; it is the operating environment. Fossils are valuable, and where value exists, parallel markets follow. The state’s answer is predictable: permits, escorts, and a monopoly on legitimate extraction.

Paleontology in North Africa increasingly resembles resource development. International teams bring capital, expertise, equipment and prestige; host states control access, movement, and export; local intermediaries—sometimes including nomads who know the terrain—supply the crucial information, as when a Tuareg man reportedly revealed a new area late in the 2019 campaign.

The result is a hybrid system: private initiative underwriting discovery, state power controlling the gate, and an illicit market lurking in the background as the price signal. Spinosaurus mirabilis may be a “wonderful” spine lizard, but where governments can license a chokepoint, they will.