Baryonyx
Reborn as Baryonyx, you would wade the rivers of Early Cretaceous England with a crocodile-like snout and a thumb claw as long as a ruler, watching for fish – and not saying no to anything else.
The wetlands of the Weald
Around 130–125 million years ago, southern England was a lowland of rivers, lakes and seasonal floods, with horsetails, ferns and conifers – the landscape recorded in the Weald Clay. Iguanodon herds grazed nearby, crocodile relatives lurked in the water and fish were abundant.
You are about 7.5–9 metres long and perhaps 1–2 tonnes. Your long, narrow jaws hold many conical teeth and end in a rosette-shaped tip, much like a gharial’s. Your neck was long and less S-curved than in many theropods, and your arms were powerful. Isotope studies of spinosaurid teeth suggest your family spent much time near or in water, though you could still walk well on land, and may have scavenged when fish were scarce.
What was in the stomach
Your skeleton preserves acid-etched scales and teeth of the large fish Scheenstia (formerly Lepidotes) and bones of a young Iguanodon. That was the first direct evidence that a theropod ate fish, and it shows you were not a fish specialist only. The huge thumb claw – about 30 centimetres along the bone – may have hooked fish or helped to tear apart carcasses.
A Surrey surprise
In January 1983 amateur collector William Walker found a giant claw in a clay pit near Ockley, Surrey. The Natural History Museum in London excavated the rest of the skeleton, and in 1986 it was named Baryonyx walkeri in his honour. Its long snout helped scientists to understand the then-puzzling Spinosaurus. Since 2021, two more relatives, Ceratosuchops and Riparovenator, have been described from the Isle of Wight. The original skeleton is about 65 percent complete and remains one of the most important theropod finds from Europe.
