Introduction:
A new dinosaur appears in the release of the hit animated show in Netflix, Jurassic World: Chaos Theory, and this dinosaur had its fair share of confusion and renaming in the paleontological community, introducing Becklespinax…wait! What?! Altispinax? Okay, it ‘was’ actually known Becklespinax before being renamed to Altispinax. This dinosaur recently shown in the animated show is surprisingly, not a new discovery but rather, a very, very old discovery. So old that it was once thought to be part of another dinosaur, Megalosaurus. Why not take a look at it’s history, discovery and all that jazz as it got thrusted into spotlight because of the show.
Discovery:
The discovery of this dinosaur goes all the way back to 1850s when a fossil collector named Samuel Husbands Beckles found a peculiar looking dinosaur bones in the quarry near Battle, East Sussex and then he sent it to the paleontologist Richard Owen to examine what he found. What Buckles found was a series of three back bones with very tall spines which he thought belonged to Megalosaurus bucklandii. He thought it belonged near the shoulder area and so the Crystal Palace Megalosaurus has a hump near the shoulder and back area.
It was later found out that it was found in the Hastings Bed Group and dated to be around Early Cretaceous. In 1888, a paleontologist named Richard Lydekker compared the back bones to that of another dubious species, Megalosaurus dunkeri because the dubious genus was only represented by a single tooth fossil from Germany. Until 1923, when another paleontologist, Friedrich von Huene came and made a new separate genus after researching that the back bones were quite different when compared with the Megalosaurus and thus Altispinax dunkeri.
At this point, I would like to stop the paleontologists from all this renaming stuff and like actually go in the fossil bed and find more fossils for it before they start renaming it again. But alas, that would not happen because they really love bickering with each other’s research in place finding more bones of this dinosaur. I find it super hard to believe that from just measly three back bones that they can identify a whole new species of dinosaurs.
But I can understand why. Paleontology is not what most people would do or be the first thing on their mind and the expeditions can be quite expensive and if the dig-site does not have valuable yields, then it will be a complete loss. There is also no profit in this as they are findings which cannot be sold and kept for research which why museums hosting expeditions needs to bear all the costs.
This is one of those forms of science which yields information, data, knowledge you name it but cannot be profited by businesses. Which is why some species, will stay fragmented for a long while. My only hope is that it gets even more fossils discovered so that we can learn what it actually looked like. And for now, it is safe to think of it as a carnivore. Oh yeah!! Need to get back on track!
After that reclassification, paleontologists considered Altispinax to be an invalid species because the bones they had, which were the back bones and a tooth fossil, had no connection to show it was from a single species and the paleontologist, Gregory Paul, considered Altispinax to be a new species of Acrocanthosaurus in 1988 and named the bones as Acrocanthosaurus? altispinax. The specific was deliberately made identical to the old generic name to emphasize that both referred to the back bone fossils.
But Gregory Paul was not certain about the classification which is why he put a ‘?’ beside it and that is why in 1991, paleontologist George Olshevsky, in honor of the original discoverer, Beckles, he named it Becklespinax altispinax. Finally, now we know why in Jurassic World Chaos Theory named it Becklespinax but it does not feel fully resolved because now it is called Altispinax dunkeri. But why though?
It’s because another researcher, Michael Maisch, decided to do a re-examination of this species with a convoluted history and concluded that tooth fossil and the back bones fossil are not the same and the tooth belongs to Megalosaurus while the back bones are of different species. Okay, all good so far but here is the thing, according to the rules set by International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), the first name given to the back bones fossil by Friedrich von Huene, Altispinax dunkeri, is to be kept for this species and has the priority as the correct name for this species.
So, even if you search for Becklespinax, you will find an article of Altispinax and I want everybody to not get confused about this. Becklespinax is sort of a junior name for it. So no need to get confused about it and Becklespinax is still Altispinax. This is probably, by far, the most I have written for the Discovery section. So, yeah!! Now you know and let’s move onto the next section.
Biology:
Now, as you have read thus far, you already know that we do not know much other than just the back bones, how do we know anything about it. I had the same question as you but let’s understand how paleontologist figured out the biology of Altispinax. This is where comparative analysis helps and thankfully, there is another dinosaur which is very similar to it and that is…*drum-roll*… Concavenator corcovatus.
We have almost 90% complete fossil!! One of the very Carcharodontosauridae which is this complete!! We have skull, hands, legs, back with a hump, tail and so much more. But how do we know it is a Carcharodontosauridae when we don’t even have the skull and that is where the hump of Concavenator comes to help. Paleontologists compared the tall spines of Altispinax and Concavenator and they found that the Altispinax back bones has grooves where the rib bones and the hips would be attached just like that of Concavenator.
Concavenator only had 2 tall spines from the back bones where as Altispinax had 3 tall spines from the back bones. Because of the comparison and finding the similarities between the 2 genus really helped in making a complete image of the Altispinax but artist would still avoid drawing this dinosaur as we do not know the full skeletal remains but this is all we know so far in the case of Biology for Altispinax.
Altispinax, in my understanding, would be around 7m (23 feet) in length, 2m (6.5 feet) in height and at least 1 ton and lived in the Early Cretaceous Period of good ol’ UK. I do hope that we can find more fossils of this dinosaur and have an even more complete picture of this truly elusive dinosaur. What is also funny is that every fossil found in the Hastings Bed Group, are all very fragmentary and dubious genus. Like all the dinosaurs are so fragmentary that we do not know what kind of dinosaurs they actually are. I feel like there should be a well-funded expedition over there to find more bones of these elusive dinosaurs.
Media:
Surprisingly, Altispinax had 2 appearances in other media except the Jurassic World Chaos Theory. One time, it appeared in the novel, Carnosaur, written by John Brosnan. It is a pretty old, dinosaur-horror novel and very hard to find nowadays. If you do have one copy extra, I would like to have one. Another appearance was in the game called Fossil Fighters. Now that I think about it, I have seen this dinosaur in game and probably had it in my game. Let me know if you want to know more about Fossil Fighters game and I played so much that I cannot forget about it.
But at last we have Altispinax or Becklespinax appear in the Jurassic World Chaos Theory Season 01 and it looks so good. While it does have that Jurassic design but it looks really good with the spikes and the sail on the back. I am delightfully surprised that Jurassic decided to use that dinosaur over more complete species. The show also showed that it had some good swimming ability and overall, a very fun action scene and I would love for it to appear in more episodes in the future.
Merchandise:
It is also not surprising that this guy does not have any merch but there is only one. You might have already guessed it and it is from Jurassic World Epic Evolution Chaos Theory toyline and I have provided the link for you to get it. And this is it for everything you need to know about Altispinax/Becklespinax. I hope to see you again in my other posts in the site and there are more species profiles on the way!
And the best way to support me in my endeavors is by sharing this with everyone who might be interested in this. And maybe also commission me for some dinosaurs art in Fiverr. I hope to see you again soon in my next post!!
