University of Chicago Paleontologist Paul C. Sereno looks inside the jaws of a 50-foot life-size model of a Spinosaurus dinosaur at the National Geographic Society exhibit in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014. AP
WASHINGTON 鈥� Picture the fearsome movie creatures of 鈥淛urassic Park鈥� crossed with the shark from 鈥淛aws.鈥� Then super-size to the biggest predator ever to roam Earth.
Now add a crocodile snout as big as a person and feet like a duck鈥檚. The result gives one some idea of a bizarre dinosaur scientists have just unveiled.
Lead discoverer Nizar Ibrahim of the University of Chicago said it鈥檚 so weird that studying it was like working on an extraterrestrial.
The 50-foot (15 meter)-long predator is the only known dinosaur to live much of its life in the water.
Scientists had some bones from the beast already, but the new skeleton discovery forced a major rethinking of what it looked like some 95 million years ago.
The result was described Thursday in the journal聽Science.