We are all aware of the debates about Spinosaurus, the biggest fish eater dinosaur the world has ever seen (insert smile here)… now things take a new twist with a reappraisal of the South Amerrican, Brazilian spinosaur Irritator challengeri...

Gondwana was the land of the spinosaurs. Irritator has been reconstructed many times, mostly with a Baryonyx-like body and Angaturama skeletal elements but it has never been seen like this. A long time ago I did a reconstruction of a Spinosaurus with a big fish sticking out of its jaws expanding the lower jaw sideways as a pelican would do… the new study of Irritator

A reappraisal of the cranial and mandibular osteology of the spinosaurid Irritator challengeri (Dinosauria: Theropoda)

Marco Schade, Oliver W. M. Rauhut, Christian Foth, Olof Moleman, and Serjoscha W. Evers

…apparently shows that I wasn’t r speculating too much and indeed, Irritator could “do the Pelican” with kinetic jaws that could be expanded sideways… I wouldn’t go all the way and separate completely the tip of the lower jaws as in some reconstructions I’ve seen, but the capability of expansion was there for sure.

Not much is known from the rest of the skeleton of Irritator, but some speculate now that even Spinosaurus itself was capable of doing such expansion, so I think it might be possible that Irritator was similar in other ways too. More like Spinosaurus than Baryonyx. This resulted in this extraordinary looking animal!

You can see here the evolution of the image. Adding a mid-sized sail was reasonable at the end… and to make it even more extreme, I decided to cover the heads with protofeathers, enhancing the pelican look. You have three versions here… your choice!