Scientists have discovered a new dinosaur in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert. Duonychus tsogtbaatari roamed Earth tens of millions of years ago, and it had a long neck, long tail, two legs, and two massive claws, which it likely used to shovel tons of vegetation into its mouth. It belonged to a group of dinos known as therizinosaurs, who were originally found in Asia and North America. This is according to a new study published in the journal iScience.
This herbivorous dinosaur was unearthed as a result of a construction project in Southern Mongolia, says Anthony Fiorillo, study co-author and executive director of the New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science (NMMNHS). “The people working [the] pipeline construction project kept their eyes open, saw that they had just uncovered something interesting, and then made a phone call or two, and that's how it ended up coming into our interest.”
Duonychus tsogtbaatari particularly stands out because it only had two fingers per hand, whereas other therizinosaurs had three, Fiorillo notes. Its claws were also fossilized — a rare finding — and instead of being straight, they were curved, indicating a hooking mechanism for the fingers.
“[There’s] very convincing evidence that these hooks were bringing branches of leaves to the mouth of the animal. … You can almost think of the hooked claws as oversized barbecue tongs, that they're bringing the food from the tree to the mouth,” he says.
Bones and diagram of newly discovered dinosaur Duonychus tsogtbaatari. The dinosaur was identified by a group of researchers that includes NMMNHS Executive Director Dr. Anthony Fiorillo. Courtesy of NMMNHS.
This is one of the most exciting times in dinosaur paleontology, Fiorillo points out. “There are so many people in the field looking for fossils or visiting existing museum collections with new eyes, fresh experiences, that the discovery of new dinosaurs is occurring remarkably quickly. There may be a new one in the works for next week, really.”
The rush to discover fossils is primal, he says. “There are just whole groups of young graduate students, young professionals, that are eager and hungry to make new discoveries, and they're starting to probe around the globe in places that we haven't gotten to yet. And so I think that's what fuels the rate of new discovery — is that there are a lot of young people who are very eager to be in the field, and they're willing to take certain risks, to go into places no one's gone before.”
The new discoveries will also help the science world revise its understanding of ancient biogeography, a field that stsudies how plants and animals are distributed across the planet, Fiorillo adds.
