New 2-clawed dinosaur discovered in Mongolia
The dinosaur has been named Duonychus tsogtbaatari, which translates to 'Tsogtbaatar's two-claw,' honoring paleontologist Khishigjav Tsogtbaatar. It was discovered by Yoshitsugu Kobayashi and his colleagues, and the fossil is between 96 and 90 million years old.
The Duonychus fossil was initially located in 2012, and an international team of researchers released a paper on the fossil in Science this month.
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The dinosaur lived in Mongolia's Gobi Desert during the Upper Cretaceous period. The fossil is incomplete, preserving the forelimbs and hips, part of the shoulder girdle and vertebrae from the back, hip and tail base.
The fossilized remains add more diversity to a group of dinosaurs that is already strange. Therizinosaurs are mostly found in Asia, largely from the Cretaceous period and were bipedal, with long necks, short tails, deep, wide hips and clawed, feathered forelimbs.
Therizinosaurs are part theropods, the group that contains all predatory dinosaurs, and part of the subgroup maniraptorans, which includes birds, velociraptors and oviraptors.
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Duonychus was a midsize species, likely weighing about 575 pounds and measuring 10 feet.
Unlike the more famous therapods like Tyrannosaurus rex, therizinosaurs were likely herbivorous and had leaf-shaped teeth for consuming vegetation. Duonychus would probably have used its two claws to shear leaves from trees for eating and possibly for grappling or self-defense.
It's the number of claws that interests scientists. While dinosaurs originally had five fingers, most evolved to three fingers. Having two digits is rare, putting Duonychus in a select group.
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The fossil is also rare in that one of the claws had the keratin covering preserved. From that, scientists determined the live animal's claw would have been 40% longer and more curved than the bony core.
Because Duonychus was discovered in an area with three other therizinosaur species, scientists believe they must have eaten different foods or used various methods to reach vegetation to avoid competition.
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