Field Museum Announces Vote to Name New Spinosaurus
A cast of the world’s largest predatory dinosaur that recently made the Field Museum its new home is getting a name, joining SUE the T. rex and Máximo the Titanosaur.
Installed on June 2, the Spinosaurus replica is 46 feet long and greets visitors in the museum’s Stanley Field Hall, suspended twelve feet above the ground in a swimming pose to evoke its reign as a prehistoric river monster in what’s now northern Africa. After initial submissions and a preliminary vote among Field Museum staff, three names rose to the top. Now the public can vote online between the finalists: Sabah (Arabic for swimmer), Sobek (Egyptian crocodile-headed god), and Sandy (Spinosaurus fossils were found in sandy desert dunes).
“As soon as we announced Spinosaurus was coming to the Field, an immediate next question was ‘Will it have a name?’” says Bridgette Russell, Public Relations & Communications Director at the Field. “Staff submitted suggestions and voted during the internal phase, then we wanted the public to weigh in for the final decision.”
The contest opens July 17 and will close on July 28. Vote at https://fieldmuseum.io/name-our-spinosaurus Visitors to the Field Museum can also vote in the Grainger Science Hub at the museum and receive a special “I voted” sticker while supplies last.
Spinosaurus was 46 feet long from its crocodile-like snout to the tip of its paddle-like tail (by comparison, SUE the T. rex is 40 feet long, though T. rex was bulkier). These features helped make Spinosaurus a fearsome semi-aquatic predator in the rivers of northern Africa, where it roamed 95 million years ago. In 2022, Field researchers Matteo Fabbri and Jingmai O’Connor even found that Spinosaurus had dense bones, like a hippo or a penguin, that would have helped it submerge itself underwater in pursuit of its fishy prey. The cast was created in Italy, based off fossils found in the Sahara Desert, and housed at the Hassan II University in Casablanca, Morocco. The Field Museum is the only place to see Spinosaurus in the entire Western Hemisphere.