Latest news with #Therizinosaurs
Asharq Al-Awsat
25-03-2025
- Science
- Asharq Al-Awsat
Weird Mongolian Dinosaur Wielded ‘Big, Sharp and Nasty' Claws
Fossils unearthed during construction of a water pipeline in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia have revealed one of the oddest members of a rather strange group of dinosaurs, a creature whose two-fingered hands sport a pair of menacing curved claws. The dinosaur, named Duonychus tsogtbaatari, measured about 10 feet (3 meters) long, weighed approximately 575 pounds (260 kg) and lived roughly 90 to 95 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, researchers said. Its claws measured about a foot (30 cm) long. Duonychus was a medium-sized member of a group of awkward-looking dinosaurs called therizinosaurs, which were known for having a rotund torso, long neck, small head, bipedal stance, feathers on the body and massive claws on the hands. While they were part of the dinosaur clade called theropods that included all the meat-eaters such as Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus, therizinosaurs preferred plants on their menu. Therizinosaurs, which inhabited Asia and North America, are distinguished by their large claws. Until now, every known therizinosaur had three clawed fingers. But Duonychus possessed one fewer, making it fitting that its name means "two claw." "Therizinosaurs are some of the weirdest dinosaurs ever. They were theropods - so, related to meat-eaters - but they looked like giant feathered sloths," said paleontologist Yoshitsugu Kobayashi of Hokkaido University Museum in Japan, lead author of the research published on Tuesday in the journal iScience. "Duonychus takes that weirdness even further. It had this short, two-fingered hand with claws like a raptor (swift meat-eating dinosaurs), but it used them to eat plants," Kobayashi said. The researchers said this Duonychus individual was not fully grown. It roamed a semi-arid environment with river channels alongside other therizinosaurs, armored dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs, duck-billed dinosaurs and a smaller forerunner of Tyrannosaurus called Alectrosaurus. While the skeleton recovered was incomplete - for instance, missing its skull and legs - the arms and hands were well-preserved. One of the claws retained its outer covering - a sheath of keratin, the same material as in our fingernails - rather than just the underlying bone. The keratin sheath added more than 40% to the claw's length. "These were big, sharp and nasty claws," said paleontologist and study co-author Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary in Canada. "That's incredibly rare," Kobayashi said of the keratin fossilization, "and it gives us an extraordinary window into how these dinosaurs actually used their hands in life. The hands are beautifully preserved and show a ton of detail, including fused wrist bones, stiff joints and the two massive claws." The claws may have served multiple functions, though primarily used for grabbing and pulling down branches to feed on leaves. "They could have used the claws for other purposes as well, perhaps for grappling, defense, digging and maybe even recognizing one's own species - 'Hey, look at me. I also have only two fingers,'" Zelenitsky said. Duonychus is an example of digit reduction - losing fingers or toes through evolution. The first land vertebrates had eight digits. The earliest dinosaurs had hands with five fingers, just as people do, but many dinosaur lineages experienced digit reduction over time. The discovery of Duonychus means there are now no fewer than five lineages of theropods known to have independently evolved just two fingers on each hand. The most famous of these was T. rex, a member of the group called tyrannosaurs whose puny arms were way out of proportion with its enormous head and torso. So why would fewer fingers be beneficial? "With dinosaurs that grasped vegetation during foraging, one would think more fingers would be better. That was obviously not the case with Duonychus, as its hand construction with two fingers seemed to suit it just fine. I suspect it may have had a specialized feeding behavior or food source," Zelenitsky said. "Tyrannosaurs were hypercarnivorous beasts with massive skulls and jaws designed for seizing and killing prey," Zelenitsky added. "For them, the fingers and arms were probably reduced because they were pretty useless compared to their skull."
BBC News
25-03-2025
- Science
- BBC News
Two-clawed dinosaur species discovered in Gobi Desert
A rare new species of two-clawed dinosaur has been discovered by scientists in Mongolia's Gobi Desert. The species, named Duonychus tsogtbaatari, is unique within a group of dinosaurs called Therizinosaurs, which stand on their hind legs and usually have three was medium-sized, with an estimated weight of approximately believe the species' long, curved claws and its ability to strongly flex them would have made it an efficient grasper of vegetation. Therizinosaurs were a group of either herbivorous or omnivorous theropod dinosaurs that lived in Asia and North America during the Cretaceous Period, which began 145 million years ago and ended 66 million years are exemplified by the massive, long-clawed form Therizinosaurus, featured in the film Jurassic World Dominion, and were "awkward looking", according to one of the study's authors Dr Darla Zelenitsky, associate professor at the University of specimen was recovered from the Bayanshiree formation in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, which dates back to the Late Cretaceous period (between 100.5 to 66 million years ago).Unesco, the UN's Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, calls the Mongolian Gobi Desert the largest dinosaur fossil reservoir in the world. The region is an especially important source of fossils from the later Cretaceous period, which is the last of the main three periods of the dinosaur age, representing the final phase of dinosaur evolution. At nearly a foot long, the claws themselves were much larger than their underlying bone, the study better grasping, the two-fingered hands may have been used for display, digging, or as formidable most famous two-fingered theropods are species within the group tyrannosaurids, which includes Tyrannosaurus rex, but Duonychus evolved its two-fingered hands separately from them and from other two-fingered theropods. The specimen also preserves the first keratinous sheath of a therizinosaur, an element that covers the claw much like human fingernails, aiding defence, movement, or prey catching.
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Weird Mongolian dinosaur wielded 'big, sharp and nasty' claws
By Will Dunham (Reuters) - Fossils unearthed during construction of a water pipeline in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia have revealed one of the oddest members of a rather strange group of dinosaurs, a creature whose two-fingered hands sport a pair of menacing curved claws. The dinosaur, named Duonychus tsogtbaatari, measured about 10 feet (3 meters) long, weighed approximately 575 pounds (260 kg) and lived roughly 90 to 95 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period, researchers said. Its claws measured about a foot (30 cm) long. Duonychus was a medium-sized member of a group of awkward-looking dinosaurs called therizinosaurs, which were known for having a rotund torso, long neck, small head, bipedal stance, feathers on the body and massive claws on the hands. While they were part of the dinosaur clade called theropods that included all the meat-eaters such as Tyrannosaurus and Spinosaurus, therizinosaurs preferred plants on their menu. Therizinosaurs, which inhabited Asia and North America, are distinguished by their large claws. Until now, every known therizinosaur had three clawed fingers. But Duonychus possessed one fewer, making it fitting that its name means "two claw." "Therizinosaurs are some of the weirdest dinosaurs ever. They were theropods - so, related to meat-eaters - but they looked like giant feathered sloths," said paleontologist Yoshitsugu Kobayashi of Hokkaido University Museum in Japan, lead author of the research published on Tuesday in the journal iScience. "Duonychus takes that weirdness even further. It had this short, two-fingered hand with claws like a raptor (swift meat-eating dinosaurs), but it used them to eat plants. It's like evolution said, 'Let's try something totally new.' And it worked," Kobayashi said. The researchers said this Duonychus individual was not fully grown. It roamed a semi-arid environment with river channels alongside other therizinosaurs, armored dinosaurs, horned dinosaurs, duck-billed dinosaurs and a smaller forerunner of Tyrannosaurus called Alectrosaurus. While the skeleton recovered was incomplete - for instance, missing its skull and legs - the arms and hands were well-preserved. One of the claws retained its outer covering - a sheath of keratin, the same material as in our fingernails - rather than just the underlying bone. The keratin sheath added more than 40% to the claw's length. "These were big, sharp and nasty claws," said paleontologist and study co-author Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary in Canada. "That's incredibly rare," Kobayashi said of the keratin fossilization, "and it gives us an extraordinary window into how these dinosaurs actually used their hands in life. The hands are beautifully preserved and show a ton of detail, including fused wrist bones, stiff joints and the two massive claws." The claws may have served multiple functions, though primarily used for grabbing and pulling down branches to feed on leaves. "They could have used the claws for other purposes as well, perhaps for grappling, defense, digging and maybe even recognizing one's own species - 'Hey, look at me. I also have only two fingers,'" Zelenitsky said. Duonychus is an example of digit reduction - losing fingers or toes through evolution. The first land vertebrates had eight digits. The earliest dinosaurs had hands with five fingers, just as people do, but many dinosaur lineages experienced digit reduction over time. The discovery of Duonychus means there are now no fewer than five lineages of theropods known to have independently evolved just two fingers on each hand. The most famous of these was T. rex, a member of the group called tyrannosaurs whose puny arms were way out of proportion with its enormous head and torso. So why would fewer fingers be beneficial? "With dinosaurs that grasped vegetation during foraging, one would think more fingers would be better. That was obviously not the case with Duonychus, as its hand construction with two fingers seemed to suit it just fine. I suspect it may have had a specialized feeding behavior or food source," Zelenitsky said. "Tyrannosaurs were hypercarnivorous beasts with massive skulls and jaws designed for seizing and killing prey," Zelenitsky added. "For them, the fingers and arms were probably reduced because they were pretty useless compared to their skull."
National Geographic
25-03-2025
- Science
- National Geographic
This bizarre new dinosaur has something in common with modern sloths
Therizinosaurs were some of the strangest dinosaurs of all time. Descended from carnivores, the prehistoric reptiles were plant-eaters and had fuzzy feathered bodies, small heads with peg-like teeth in their jaws, bulbous stomachs that acted like fermenting vats for heaps of vegetation, and impressively large claws on each of their hands. Their build and claws have drawn comparisons to sloths, but some of these reptiles stood over 13 feet tall and weighed more than five tons. Now paleontologists have uncovered a therizinosaur that stands out even among its unusual relatives—because it's missing a finger. Described in the journal iScience today, the new dinosaur comes from rocks in Mongolia's Gobi Desert that are over 90 million years old. Back in 2012, paleontologists from the Mongolian Academy of Sciences initially unearthed parts of the spine, ribs, hips, and shoulders, and finally found two complete hands. They immediately recognized the fossils as those of a therizinosaur, but its status as a new dinosaur would take time to fully uncover. When Hokkaido University paleontologist and lead study author Yoshitsugu Kobayashi first saw the fossils the following year, he was immediately surprised that the dinosaur only had two fingers on each hand. Until the new find, all known therizinosaurs had three fingers with large claws at the end of each. 'Not only that, but one of the fingers had a preserved keratinous sheath and I was like 'Holy crap,' Kobayashi recalls.
