Mesozoic Life Project is an ambitious multimedia project by a team of artists coordinated by Kevin Miguel (“Blayken”), which aims to make documentaries, comics and models of Mesozoic animals.
Few are the animals in which fame goes hand in hand with mystery as in Spinosaurus. Only in the last decade we began to get an idea of what this theropod really looks like, and it had proven to be much more bizarre than expected. Rising to fame in 2001 with the film Jurassic Park III, new discoveres in 2014 and then in 2020 showed that it was actually a rather different animal from the one seen in the movie. Not surprisingly, the development of this model had to adapt to scientific progress: the first concept art featured a quadrupedal posture and a tail with a morphology similar to the traditional theropod one, but the subsequent ones and the final model are bipedal and with a paddle-shaped tail as shown in the 2020 paper.
In the model are immediately visible the retracted nostril, a feature apparently useful for an animal that spent a lot of time near water, but which may not reflect the condition of the animal in life, as almost all animals have the esternal nasal opening more frontal than bony fenestra. Alternatively, this could be an adaptation to strengthen the anterior end of the snout during stresses in the opening and closing the jaws while fighting with aquatic prey. The teeth have the classic rosette distribution that is encountered in multiple predators of aquatic animals (e.g. pike conger eels, some crocodiles, plesiosaurs). The short and thick tongue is in line with a recent paper suggesting that most theropods may have had relatively stiff tongues, similar to those of modern crocodiles. The position of the ear opening is correct (there are reconstructions that put it the temporal fenestra).
On the lower jaw there is an unfortunately quite evident seam, leftover of an articulated jaw discarded during production. Fortunately, color helps hiding it.
Taxonomy of the North African Spinosaurinae is a complicated thing, and several papers do not agree on whether thereis a single species or several. A series of cervical vertebrae has been identified with the name ofSigilmassasaurus brevicollis. There is no published material on the forelimbs of Spinosaurus beyond isolated bones, so the forelimbs of the model reference other species. The model rests on the base touching it with the tip of the claw of the second finger of the left forelimb, quite a common solution in models of dinosaurs with well developed forelimbs. The base looks quite stable and the material is stiff, so it should withstand the summer months tha plague bipedal models.
On the proportions of Spinosaurus, which came out as a true surprise, it has been written in lenght and, in fact, with its long body and short legs, it’s very different from the traditional image of a theropod. It’s no coincidence that, before the current version, this model was conceived as quadrupedal. Over the years there have been discussions about whether this restoration is correct or not, whether the material was chimerical, whether the morphology of Spinosaurus was really this, and the debate is still ongoing between different paleontologist teams. This is beyond the scope of this review, but the model represents a faithful representation of the paper by Ibrahim et al. (2020) in which was described FSAC-KK 11888, the specimen which which changed our idea of Spinosaurus since it included the hindlimbs and the tail with its high neural spines.
The shape of the “sail” itself (which is more correctly an elongation of the neural spines) is controversial, as the main remains of dorsal vertebrae of Spinosaurus (IPHG 1912 VIII 19) belonged to the specimen lost in the bombing of Dresden. Moreover, uncertainties remain about their exact position, with alternative placements to what Stromer suggested proposed over the years. The model, as mentioned, follows faithfully Ibrahim et al. (2020). The same can be said for the tail, depending by the paper the shape changes, with restorations that favor the idea that it served as propulsor in water (i.e. Ibrahim et al. 2020) and others that suggest a display function (Sereno et al. 2022).
Unlike other restorations, the Mesozoic Life Project model does not feature the crocodilian osteoderms so associated with Spinosaurus due to its vague resemblance. However, osteoderms are bones (ossifications at the level of the dermis, like some of the bones that compose your skull) and, therefore, would have had the same chance of fossilizing as other bones. Considering that they have been extensively found in animals that had them (pseudosuchians, thyrophorans, titanosaurs, xenartians) at the present time it seems unlikely that Spinosaurus had osteoderms. Instead, the model shows a series of larger, rounder scales, similar to those found in Carnotaurus, running along the tail.
Some criticism has been raised about this model due to the different extension of the webbing between the toes of the right and left hindlimb. However, in today’s waterfowl, such as ducks, webbing is not a rigid structure, and can deform or stratch to the skin depending on the animal’s movement. It cannot be ruled out that this was also the case for Spinosaurus, and this was probably the idea behind this representation. The two legs, in fact, are at a different step in the walking cycle.
The base depicts the muddy bank of a river, a not far-fetched habitat for Spinosaurus. Taking advantage of the length of the forelimbs, the model rests with its left claw on a conical pile of mud. Unfortunately, as has happened with other brands, the base has been subject to expansions and contractions during molding, and therefore the Spinosaurus footprints that indicate where the model should be placed do not match perfectly with its feet. However, this is a relatively marginal issue, considering that the footprints would not have been enough for the model to stand on its own, anyway.
Is the first model by Mesozoic Life Project, but the paintjob is notably complex. Far from looking simply gray, there are several shades along the sides, tail and sail. A trivia is that the last four vertical stripes on the sail were originally supposed to be white, but were changed during production when it was decided that orange would lookbetter.
Ultimately, the Mesozoic Life Project Spinosaurus is an excellent snapshot of the knowledge of Spinosaurus in recent years, and combined with the its competitive price, even for a model of that size (it measures 44 cm, for a scale of 1:18 if you consider it to represent the neotype and 1:24 if you consider it to represent the Milan snout) this makes it an interesting piece for all collections.
