With a bill like a duck, but teeth like a crocodile, a neck like a swan and killer claws, a new dinosaur species uncovered by scientists looks like something Dr Seuss could have dreamed up.
It also had flippers like a penguin and while it walked like an ostrich, it could also swim.
It is the first time swimming ability has been shown for a two-legged, meat-eating dinosaur.
Photo: Reuters
The tiny creature, only about 45cm tall, roamed the Earth 75 million years ago in what is now Mongolia.
Its full curled-up skeleton was found in a sandstone rock.
“It’s such a peculiar animal,” said Dennis Voeten, a paleontology researcher at Palacky University in the Czech Republic. “It combines different parts we knew from other groups into this one small animal.”
In a study released on Wednesday by the journal Nature, Voeten and his coauthors named it Halszkaraptor escuilliei or Halszka after the late Polish paleontologist Halszka Osmolska.
Paleontologist Kristi Curry Rogers of Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota, who did not participate in the study, called it “a pretty crazy chimera: a swan neck and dinosaur body, but with a mouthful of tiny teeth, and hands and feet that look like they might be good for swimming.”
Its mashup body let it run and hunt on the ground, as well as fish in fresh water, study coauthor Paul Tafforeau said.
He is a paleontologist at ESRF, the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France, a powerful X-ray generator where numerous tests were made on the fossil.
Lead author Andrea Cau, a paleontologist at the Geological Museum Capellini in Bologna, Italy, said he was at first highly suspicious about the fossil’s authenticity, both because of its appearance, and the fact that the rock containing the skeleton had been smuggled out of Mongolia and left in a private collector’s hands.
“I asked myself: ‘Is this a real, natural skeleton, or an artifact, a chimera? If this is a fake, how could I demonstrate it?’” Cau said in an e-mail. “Assuming it was a fake instead of starting assuming that the fossil is genuine was the most appropriate way to start the investigation of such a bizarre fossil.”
So researchers used the European Synchrotron to create 3D images of the fossil, which showed the creature was indeed a single animal and not a concoction built up from several sources.
For example, an arm hidden in the rock perfectly matched the visible left arm and lines indicating growth matched up across the bones.
Even though the creature was not dreamed up by Dr Seuss, it got a blessing from a Dr Sues.
Smithsonian Institution paleontologist Hans Sues, who was not part of the research, praised the work and said it “shows again how amazingly diverse dinosaurs were.”
People with missing teeth might be able to grow new ones, said Japanese dentists, who are testing a pioneering drug they hope will offer an alternative to dentures and implants. Unlike reptiles and fish, which usually replace their fangs on a regular basis, it is widely accepted that humans and most other mammals only grow two sets of teeth. However, hidden underneath our gums are the dormant buds of a third generation, said Katsu Takahashi, head of oral surgery at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital in Osaka, Japan. His team launched clinical trials at Kyoto University Hospital in October, administering an experimental
IVY LEAGUE GRADUATE: Suspect Luigi Nicholas Mangione, whose grandfather was a self-made real-estate developer and philanthropist, had a life of privilege The man charged with murder in the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare made it clear he was not going to make things easy on authorities, shouting unintelligibly and writhing in the grip of sheriff’s deputies as he was led into court and then objecting to being brought to New York to face trial. The displays of resistance on Tuesday were not expected to significantly delay legal proceedings for Luigi Nicholas Mangione, who was charged in last week’s Manhattan killing of Brian Thompson, the leader of the US’ largest medical insurance company. Little new information has come out about motivation,
‘MONSTROUS CRIME’: The killings were overseen by a powerful gang leader who was convinced his son’s illness was caused by voodoo practitioners, a civil organization said Nearly 200 people in Haiti were killed in brutal weekend violence reportedly orchestrated against voodoo practitioners, with the government on Monday condemning a massacre of “unbearable cruelty.” The killings in the capital, Port-au-Prince, were overseen by a powerful gang leader convinced that his son’s illness was caused by followers of the religion, the civil organization the Committee for Peace and Development (CPD) said. It was the latest act of extreme violence by powerful gangs that control most of the capital in the impoverished Caribbean country mired for decades in political instability, natural disasters and other woes. “He decided to cruelly punish all
NOTORIOUS JAIL: Even from a distance, prisoners maimed by torture, weakened by illness and emaciated by hunger, could be distinguished Armed men broke the bolts on the cell and the prisoners crept out: haggard, bewildered and scarcely believing that their years of torment in Syria’s most brutal jail were over. “What has happened?” asked one prisoner after another. “You are free, come out. It is over,” cried the voice of a man filming them on his telephone. “Bashar has gone. We have crushed him.” The dramatic liberation of Saydnaya prison came hours after rebels took the nearby capital, Damascus, having sent former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad fleeing after more than 13 years of civil war. In the video, dozens of
RSS