Retro Spinosaurus

I always wanted to make a piece depicting the old Spinosaurus I grew up with. I discovered Spinosaurus in David Lambert's Field Guide to Dinosaurs from the early 1980s. At the time, it was envisioned as a typical theropod with a fairly usual allosauroid head, and I was delighted to see that, even though Dimetrodon was not a dinosaur, there seemed to be an actual theropod dinosaur that looked pretty much like it, with a cool sail on its back.

After the discovery of Baryonyx later in the 80s, paleontologists soon put 2+2 together and realized Spinosaurus belonged to the same family as Baryonyx, and envisioned it with a long, croc-like skull.

I started a drawing depicting the old paradigm around 18 years ago just for fun, but I never finished it. However, I recently realized that I could combine a few of my old drawings to get an approximation of what I was going for. My old Spinosaurus piece from 2007-2008 was already dated as heck anyway, so I might as well use it as the basis for my vintage Spino. I replaced its head with the one from my old Carcharodontosaurus drawing, which was also inaccurate and drawn from memory, and used the background specimen from by Giganotosaurus drawing as a donor for the head of the background Spino.

I still intend to make a fully new vintage Spinosaurus drawing, but I think this turned out pretty good!