Re: Irritator,Suchomimus

["Thomas R. Holtz, Jr." <th81@umail.umd.edu>]

At 09:06 AM 1/6/99 -0800, you wrote:
>Subject: Irritator,Suchomimus                                8:44 AM    
>1/6/99
>
>  Perhaps many of the assumptions I'm  about to propose  are derived from 
>comparisons based on pictures( and bad  ones at that) and a quick reading of 
>a paper, but has Irritator been revisited and compared to Suchomimus or 
>Baryonyx?

Yes, Irritator has been reexamined by various authors.  In fact, a new study
of the skull is in the works at present.

To my knowledge, all parties who have reexamined the Irritator material
conclude it is indeed a spinosaurid.  Furthermore, as you can find in the
paper (esp. pp. 1300-1302), there is some good evidence that Irritator is a
spinosaurine spinosaurid (i.e., closer to Spinosaurus than to Baryonyx or
Suchomimus).

Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Vertebrate Paleontologist     Webpage: http://www.geol.umd.edu
Dept. of Geology              Email:tholtz@geol.umd.edu
University of Maryland        Phone:301-405-4084
College Park, MD  20742       Fax:  301-314-9661