Suchomimus was a theropod dinosaur that lived in the Lower Cretaceous (about 120 million years ago) in what is now Niger, Africa. ‘Suchomimus’ literally means ‘crocodile mimic’.
History
Suchomimus is not a common dinosaur. It was first discovered in 1997 by a team led by Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago. The best specimen is an incomplete skeleton lacking a skull. Fortunately, the same locality produced a partial skull and several individual bones, so it was possible to reconstruct a composite skeleton. Subsequent expeditions have produced a few more bones, but a complete skeleton of Suchomimus has yet to be discovered.
Suchomimus and its close relatives Spinosaurus, Baryonyx, and Irritator (forming the family ‘Spinosauridae’) are amongst the most mysterious dinosaurs known. They all have very crocodile-like skulls that suggest that, like crocodiles, they would have been good at catching fish, but their bodies are not at all crocodile-like, and show no obvious adaptions for swimming.