Spinosaurus Facts for Kids
SPY-noh-SORE-us · its name means “spine lizard”
A long-snouted, fish-eating dinosaur with a tall sail on its back.
- 📏 46 ft14 m1 long
- ⚖️ weight: not yet checked
- 🕰️ the Cretaceous
- 🍽️ fish
Spinosaurus had a tall sail on its back. It had a long snout like a crocodile's. It ate fish.
Spinosaurus had a long, narrow snout like a crocodile's and cone-shaped teeth for catching slippery fish. Tall spines along its back held up a sail of skin. It spent a lot of time in rivers.
Spinosaurus may be the longest meat-eating dinosaur known. Recent fossils showed a tail shaped like a paddle, which made scientists think it swam a lot, though they still argue how much. The first Spinosaurus fossils, found in Egypt, were lost in a war, so scientists studied drawings and later finds in Morocco.
Every dinosaur number is scientists’ best guess from bones, so each one says where it came from.
How big was Spinosaurus?
Spinosaurus in numbers
| Length (nose to tail) | 46 ft14 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 |
| Fossils found in | North Africa, including Egypt and Morocco |
| What kind | a theropod: a two-legged dinosaur, the group birds came from |
Wow!
- It had a tall sail on its back.
- Its tail was shaped like a paddle.
- The first fossils of it were lost, and only drawings were left.
🦴 Spinosaurus’s bones
Books about Spinosaurus, free at the library
Ask a grown-up to tap the button: it shows where to borrow a book about Spinosaurus for free.
Where was the land back then?
The continents were in different places when Spinosaurus lived, in the Cretaceous. Open Planet Earth, pick Drifting continents, and slide back in time to see where the land was.
🦖 Ride a Spino in Dino DashThe game’s rare Shadow Spino is a made-up version of this animal.
Its neighbours in time
Where these numbers come from
- Wikidata, from the Natural History Museum's Dino Directory, checked 30 October 2026.
- Wikidata, Spinosaurus (Q130966), checked 30 October 2026.
To read more: the Natural History Museum’s Dino Directory (see also, not copied).