Vectispinus

The "White Rock spinosaurid" is a genus of large spinosaurid from the Early Cretaceous that lived in what is now the Vectis Formation of the Isle of Wight in England. It is also alternatively called "Vectispinus", though this name for the genus isn't official.

## History

The spinosaurid's fossils were discovered by the a local collector Nick Chase, who gave the specimens to Jeremy Lockwood when he was ill, asking him to describe and publish them. It is estimated exceed 10 meters in length, which is very large for a baryonychine. Thomas R. Holtz Jr. agrees with the conclusions presented by the study despite being uninvolved. It is from the Vectis Formation, a Barremian-Aptian formation that is the youngest of the Wealden Supergroup, with this individual dating to ~125 million years, which was the inspiration for its proposed name.

At discovery, it was the youngest spinosaurid from Britain, which the describers hope to be diagnostic enough to name. Matrix on the remains suggest that they were unearthed during a single cliff-fall. During press runs from Barker et al. (2021)'s publication, they teased additional spinosaurid fragments at the exposition. Darren Naish posted them to his Twitter with the remains censored.

## Description

It is known from an anterior dorsal, 2 fused sacrals (IWCMS 2018.30.2), an anterior caudal (IWCMS 2018.30.3), fragmented ribs, pelves parts, long bone fragments and some additional vertebral material. They are all exceptionally large, indicating such a large size, and a combination of size consistency and close proximity suggest that they are of the same individual. The initial describers knew that the remains were of a tetanuran when work first started based on the bones being pneumatic, opisthocoelus form on the anterior caudal, laminae and the possible posterior ilium part has a brevis fossa.

They ruled our identification as a sauropod based on a plethora of morphological traits, using synapomorphies such as 'webbing' at the base of the neural spine (unique to Spinosauridae) and a flat ring at the anterior articular face (unique to Megalosauroidea). They did not find any specific traits that indicate that it is from an already-named genus and, at some times, considered the name "*Vectispinus*", but did not because there are no autapomorphies and it is fragmentary.

The vertebral centra are ~16 centimeters long, on par with or larger than *Spinosaurus*.

The size of the White Rock spinosaurid can only be roughly scaled, due its extremely fragmentary remains. "*Vectispinus*" was likely up to 10.7 to 13.1 meters in length with a mass of around 5.4 tonnes, making it the second largest known spinosaurid and probably the largest known theropod of throughout the europe ( only rivaled by the gigantic; colossal; french megalosaurid premaxilla that belonging to an unknown and unnamed genus ). Its original vertebrae is comperable to Spinosaurus as cited by paleontologists.

## Classification

The presence of centrodiapophyseal lamina, prezygodiapophyseal lamina and deep prezygocentrodiapophyseal fossa suggest spinosaurine affinities, which would match with the massive size. They modified Barker et al. (2021)'s dataset to include this taxon, and is sometimes recovered as a spinosaurine and other times is outside of any subfamily.

## Paleoecology & Notes

It was contemporaneous with *Mantellisaurus*,*Polacanthus*, and Iguanodon but ichnites and the possibility of new discovery suggest a much more diverse ecosystem. This environment would have had many narrow river channels meeting a lagoon.

Based from the available fossil records of spinosaurid groups, both Baryonychidae and Spinosaurinae. It was more of a generalist with being prone to hunt marine animals. It more than likely had a highly opportunistic diet, considering its larger side; with occasional scavenging. Evidence for its more generalist diet is clearly available in Both Baryonyx and Iberospinus that found to consume both marine animals and dinosaurs such as Iguanodontids.

Given the fragmentary specimens it could have been a suitable generalist carnivore because it was the Largest known theropod of its environment. Its size would have made it quite intimidating and prone to bullying other theropods off their kills; with very few predators or competition.

## Appearance in Jurassic Park and other media

### *Jurassic Park*

* Vectispinus appeared in the game Jurassic World: Alive.

## References

1. ↑ https://tetzoo.com/blog/2022/6/8/giant-spinosaurid-dinosaur-from-the-isle-of-wight
2. ↑ https://twitter.com/valdosaurus/status/1534861120732798978
3. ↑ https://theropoddatabase.com/Megalosauroidea.htm#Vectispinus
4. ↑ https://news.sky.com/story/largest-ever-land-based-predator-dinosaur-found-on-the-isle-of-wight-12630674
5. ↑ https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2022-06-09/remains-of-europes-largest-ever-land-predator-dinosaur-found-on-isle-of-wight
6. ↑ https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/how-did-baryonyx-change-what-we-knew-about-spinosaurs.html
7. ↑ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4703214/