Baryonyx Facts for Kids
BAIR-ee-ON-ix · its name means “heavy claw”
A fish-eating dinosaur with a long snout and a big claw.
- 📏 33 ft10 m1 long
- ⚖️ weight: not yet checked
- 🕰️ the Cretaceous
- 🍽️ fish
Baryonyx had a long snout like a crocodile's. It had a big claw on each hand. It ate fish.
Baryonyx had a long, narrow snout like a crocodile's, with lots of small, pointed teeth, good for catching slippery fish. It walked on two legs and had a big, curved claw on each thumb. Its name means heavy claw.
In England, an amateur fossil hunter named William Walker found a huge claw in a clay pit in Surrey. Scientists dug there and found much of a skeleton from a dinosaur new to science, and they named it Baryonyx walkeri for him. It is a cousin of Spinosaurus: both had long snouts and ate fish. Scientists also found fish scales where its stomach had been, and bones of a young Iguanodon, so it ate other things, too.
Every dinosaur number is scientists’ best guess from bones, so each one says where it came from.
How big was Baryonyx?
Baryonyx in numbers
| Length (nose to tail) | 33 ft10 m1scientists' estimate |
|---|---|
| Height at the hips | no checked number yet |
| Weight | no checked number yet |
| When it lived | no checked number yet |
| What it ate | mostly fish, and maybe other animals |
| Fossils found in | southern England, in a clay pit in Surrey |
| What kind | a theropod: a two-legged dinosaur, the group birds came from |
Wow!
- An amateur fossil hunter found its huge claw in a clay pit in England.
- It had a long snout like a crocodile's.
- It is a cousin of Spinosaurus.
🦴 Baryonyx’s bones
Books about Baryonyx, free at the library
Ask a grown-up to tap the button: it shows where to borrow a book about Baryonyx for free.
Where was the land back then?
The continents were in different places when Baryonyx lived, in the Cretaceous. Open Planet Earth, pick Drifting continents, and slide back in time to see where the land was.
Its neighbours in time
Where these numbers come from
- Wikidata, from the Natural History Museum's Dino Directory, checked 30 October 2026.
- Wikidata, Baryonyx (Q131006), checked 30 October 2026.
To read more: the Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory (see also, not copied).