GENERAL GEOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -It was destroyed in World War II, specifically “during the night of 24/25 April 1944 in a British bombing raid of Munich” that severely damaged the building housing the Paläontologisches Museum München (Bavarian State Collection of Paleontology). However, detailed drawings and descriptions of the specimen remain.

Detailed explanation-2: -Tragically, however, that original Spinosaurus skeleton-and all of Stromer’s other dinosaur fossils from Egypt-were destroyed during the Second World War, more specifically in a British Royal Air Force bombing of Munich on April 24, 1944.

Detailed explanation-3: -No other carnivorous dinosaur that we know of lived like this. But Spinosaurus is still changing. Our understanding of the water-loving beast is pieced together by scattered remains, and a full skeleton of the animal has never been found.

Detailed explanation-4: -For thirty years, these fossils were safe and sound in Munich’s Paläontologisches Museum. Then the war came, and European museums weren’t safe havens anymore. On the night of April 24, 1944 the Royal Air Force hit Munich with a bombing raid that wrecked the museum and destroyed the Spinosaurus fossils inside.

Detailed explanation-5: -The only known Spinosaurus bones were lost. Fast-forward to 2008, when new Spinosaurus fossils were found in the Moroccan Sahara along desert cliffs known as the Kem Kem beds. It turned out that these bones matched a partial Spinosaurus skeleton that had recently turned up at the Natural History Museum in Milan, Italy.