Eustreptospondylus, a spinosaur ancestor?

Adam Khor

Remember Eustreptospondylus from Walking with Dinosaurs? It seems that it may have looked quite a bit different from this classic depiction.



In fact, it may have looked quite a lot like a short-snouted spinosaur. I don´t have a link to any papers about it, sadly, but here's a reconstruction of the skull, which seems to have a slight kink on the snout very much like a spinosaur:


This adds weight to the idea that spinosaurs were related to megalosaurs and may have been descended from them- and not from dilophosaurs as has also been suggested. It seems telling to me that Baryonyx, the oldest known spinosaur, comes from the same region as Eustreptospondylus (I'm not counting those supossed Jurassic spinosaurs known only from teeth or vertebrae or miserable finger bones- they could be anything, really). Knowing the fossil record and how incomplete it is, tho, this may be mere coincidence.
Even so, it makes for a neat story- if Eustreptospondylus was living in a series of islands and living off sea creatures as we've been told, it would make it a good starting point for the evolution of spinosaurs. :>