A new type of dinosaur found in Mongolia has surprised scientists because it had very strange hands and huge claws. This dinosaur is called Duonychus tsogtbaatari. It lived about 90 to 95 million years ago. It was part of a group of dinosaurs called therizinosaurs, which were plant-eaters. But this dinosaur was not like the others in its group — it was unique and had some very different features.

A strange plant-eating dino with two fingers

Therizinosaurs were already strange dinosaurs. Even though they were related to meat-eaters, they looked more like giant sloths. They had small heads, long necks, and big round bellies. But Deinonychus was even stranger. It had only two fingers on each hand, which is very different from other dinosaurs in its group.

"Therizinosaurs are some of the weirdest dinosaurs ever. They were theropods – so, related to meat-eaters – but they looked like giant feathered sloths," said Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, a palaeontologist from Hokkaido University Museum in Japan and lead author of the study, as quoted by Reuters.

Even more interesting, Dromaeosaurus had claws that looked like those of a raptor – sharp and curved. But it didn’t use them to hunt. Instead, it used them to eat plants. "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 added.

The name Duonychus comes from Greek, meaning "two claws", and the second part of its name honours a Mongolian palaeontologist named Khishigjav Tsogtbaatar.

A rare fossil with a big clue

The fossil of Deinonychus was discovered in the Gobi Desert, but it was not a full skeleton. The skull and legs were missing. Still, the arms and claws were in very good condition. One claw was especially well preserved. It still had its keratin sheath, the same stuff our fingernails are made of, which made the claw 40% longer than the bone inside.

“These were big, sharp and nasty claws,” said Darla Zelenitsky, a palaeontologist from the University of Calgary and co-author of the study. This keratin covering is very rare in fossils and helps scientists learn more about how the claws were used.

The hands of Deinonychus also had "fused wrist bones, stiff joints, and the two massive claws," said Kobayashi. This suggests that the dinosaur may have used its claws in a special way to eat certain plants.

Early dinosaurs usually had five fingers, but over time, some dinosaurs lost a few fingers as they evolved. Dromaeosaurus is now the fifth known group of meat-related dinosaurs to have only two fingers, just like the Tyrannosaurus rex.

“As reported by Reuters, ‘With dinosaurs that grasped vegetation during foraging, one would think more fingers would be better,” Zelenitsky said. “That was obviously not the case with Duyonchus… I suspect it may have had a specialised feeding behaviour or food source.”

 

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