Spinosaurus (meaning "spine lizard") is a genus of spinosaurid dinosaur that lived in what now is North Africa during the Cenomanian to upper Turonian stages of the Late Cretaceous period, about 99 to 93.5 million years ago. This genus was known first from Egyptian remains discovered in 1912 and described by German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer in 1915.

Spinosaurus is the largest of all known carnivorous animals, nearly as large as or even larger than other theropods such as Tyrannosaurus, Giganotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus. The latest estimates suggest a weight of 6.4 to 7.5 metric tons (7.1 to 8.3 short tons). The skull of Spinosaurus was long, low and narrow, similar to that of a modern crocodilian, and bore straight conical teeth with no serrations. It would have had large, robust forelimbs bearing three-fingered hands, with an enlarged claw on the first digit. The distinctive neural spines of Spinosaurus, which were long extensions of the vertebrae (or backbones), grew to at least 1.65 meters (5.4 ft) long and were likely to have had skin connecting them, forming a sail-like structure.

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