Bully for Baryonyx

When amateur fossil collector William Walker found a huge fossilised claw in a Surrey clay pit, our understanding of theropod dinosaurs began to change.  The claw (which was discovered in January 1983), was only the start of the story.  The following late spring and early summer saw a field team from the Natural History Museum in London working in the pit to extract nearly two thirds of the skeleton of an unknown and never seen before meat-eating dinosaur.

Bully for Baryonyx

The bones were entombed in hard siltstone nodules and clay.  It took a further six years of preparation before all the bones representing a single, individual specimen had been cleaned and prepared for display.  The dinosaur was named by palaeontologists Alan J. Charig and Angela C. Milner in 1986, when enough of the fossil material had been cleaned and prepared revealing a very different type of theropod dinosaur.  Baryonyx walkeri is a member of the Spinosauridae family.

An Illustration of the Theropod Dinosaur Baryonyx (B. walkeri)

Picture credit: Everything Dinosaur

The Theropod Baryonyx walkeri

The theropod was named Baryonyx walkeri and it has been classified as a member of the Spinosauridae family, although the exact taxonomic position of Baryonyx and related dinosaurs such as Suchomimus remains disputed.  A revision in 2018, concluded that baryonychid dinosaurs were monophyletic (all descended from a common ancestor).  Everything Dinosaur team members have been busy preparing for the arrival next year of the new CollectA 1:40 scale Baryonyx model, the illustration (above) has been commissioned so that we can update our Baryonyx fact sheet.

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The New for 2019 CollectA Deluxe Baryonyx Dinosaur Model

The Subfamily Baryonychinae

In their original 1986 description, palaeontologists Alan Charig and Angela Milner erected the Subfamily Baryonychinae, however, where the Baryonychinae sits within the Spinosauridae remains open to debate.

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