“Strangest Dinosaurs Ever” Yield Clues to Dino Growth
An extraordinarily bizarre-looking species of dinosaur has been discovered in China’s Gobi desert that could unlock clues as to how an unusual family of vegetarian dinos evolved, scientists say.
The newfound species belonged to a group of large dinosaurs called therizinosaurs, relatives of meat-eating theropods like Tyrannosaurus rex.
“These are without doubt some of the strangest dinosaurs ever found,” said Matt Lamanna, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“They looked kind of like a gigantic plucked turkey.”
The earliest known therizinosaurs date to 125 million years ago and have been found in eastern China and western North America.
Scientists are unsure where these dinosaurs evolved first, but they likely migrated between the continents on land bridges that periodically appeared millions of years ago.
Read the full story at National geographic
