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About 70 million years ago , a humpbacked , duck - billed dinosaur with monstrous front limbs and " mudding hooves " tramped through rivers hunt Pisces .
Though the odd - looking creature , namedDeinocheirus mirificus , was discover nearly 50 years ago , almost nothing was make love about the deep creature until two new skeletons were unearth in Mongolia recently .
Scientists recently unearthed a humpbacked, ostrichlike dinosaur with huge forelimbs from sediments in Mongolia. The dinosaur, dubbedDeinocheirus mirificus, was an omnivorous theropod that tramped through muddy river bottoms hunting for fish.
" Deinocheiruswas a peculiar humpbacked form with a duckbill - like skull , " that could grow to the sizing of aT. rex , said study lead author Yuong - Nam Lee , a researcher at the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources in South Korea . [ See a Video of the Wacky Humpbacked Dinosaur Walking ]
By analyzing the fresh discovered skeletons , which were key today ( Oct. 22 ) in the journal Nature , Lee and his colleague were finally able-bodied to place the flakey creature on a dinosaur family tree diagram .
Mystery hands
The ostrichlike dinosaurDeinocheirus mirificuslived about 70 million years ago in what is now Mongolia. The odd creature had stubby toes that would have helped it tramp through muddy river bottoms looking for fish.
In 1965 , paleontologists excavate the colossus , 7.8 - foundation - tenacious ( 2.4 time ) forelimb of a terrifying dinosaur in Mongolia’sGobi Desert . Because only the limbs and a few costa bones were discovered , scientists could say almost nothing about the mysterious creature , which they dubbedDeinocheirus mirificus , or " strange ugly manus . "
After pick up the prey , the squad shipped the remaining bones to South Korea and assembled them . They soon identified the creature as the elusiveDeinocheirus mirificus , minus the head and feet ( which were likely stolen by the poachers . ) With the first fossil skeleton assembled , the researchers looked at their own collections and realized they had anotherD. mirificuspartial skeleton sit down on the shelf , Lee say .
Then , in 2011 , one of the study co - authors discovered that a individual European aggregator had aDeinocheirus skull , left hand and feet . The European collector had buy the fossils from a Nipponese vendee , who in turn pose them from someone in Mongolia — plausibly the person who had consume them from the original quarry site . Like jigsaw puzzle pieces , the European fossil fragments conform to dead with the bones that Lee and his co-worker collected in Mongolia , create an almost concluded picture of the animal .
curious physical structure
The odd creature looked like something out of a " Star Wars " movie . It had a toothless , duck’s egg - billed snout , a crookback back and stumpy , straightforward - toed hooves that would have maintain the dinosaur from sinking into the clay as it trudge through muddy river bottoms . It also boast a pygostyle , or a fused tailbone that supportedfans of feather , whichD. mirificusmay have waggled in a sporty exhibit , Lee told Live Science in an email .
The dinosaur was also very large : One of the fauna was 36 feet ( 11 m ) long and weighed about 6.4 scads , Lee said .
In addition to the fossils , the team also found about 1,400 gastroliths , or gizzard stones , that the toothless dinosaurs might have used in their guts to labor up plants . blend with fish parts found in the dinosaur ’s stomach country , the two suggest the brute was an omnivore .
With an almost - accomplished skeleton , the squad was able to rebuild theDeinocheirusfamily tree . The beaked beast is a appendage of the ornithomimosaurs , a mathematical group of dinosaur that look superficially like ostriches , but are actually theropods , the research worker wrote in the paper . ( theropod were a radical of predominantly predatory dinosaurs that includedTyrannosaurus rex . )
D. mirificusdidn’t look much like its ornithomimosaur cousins , however . Most of those creatures had " small skulls with great eyes and sylphlike torso with relatively retentive hind branch , " which allowed them to run , Lee say . In contrast , Deinocheiruswould have had a more leaden gait .
