Scientists describe newly discovered dinosaur as 'one of the weirdest', 'pretty goofy'

WASHINGTON –  Nearly 50 years ago, scientists found bones of two large, powerful dinosaur arms in Mongolia and figured they had discovered a fearsome critter with killer claws.

Now scientists have found the rest of the dinosaur and have new descriptions for it: goofy and weird.


The beast probably lumbered along on two legs like a cross between TV dinosaur Barney and Jar Jar Binks of Star Wars fame. It was 16 feet tall and 36 feet long, weighing seven tons, with a duckbill on its head and a hump-like sail on its back. Throw in those killer claws, tufts of feathers here and there, and no teeth -- and try not to snicker.

And if that's not enough, it ate like a giant vacuum cleaner.

That's Deinocheirus mirificus (DY'-noh'-KY-ruhs mur-IHF'-ee-kuhs), which means "terrible hands that look peculiar." It is newly reimagined after a full skeleton was found in Mongolia and described in a paper released Wednesday by the journal Nature.  Some 70 million years old, it's an ancestral relative of the modern ostrich and belongs to the dinosaur family often called ostrich dinosaurs.

"Deinocheirus turned out to be one the weirdest dinosaurs beyond our imagination," study lead author Yuong-Nam Lee, director of the Geological Museum in Daejeon, South Korea, said in an email.

When scientists in 1965 found the first forearm bones -- nearly 8 feet long -- many of them envisioned "a creature that would strike terror in people," said University of Maryland dinosaur expert Thomas Holtz Jr, who wasn't part of the study. "Now it's a creature that would strike bemusement, amazement."

This undated handout image provided by Michael Skrepnick, Dinosaurs in Art, Nature Publishing Group, shows a Deinocheirus. (AP Photo/Michael Skrepnick, Dinosaurs in Art, Nature Publishing Group)

And yes, he said, "it's pretty goofy."

The find is tremendous but is a cautionary tale about jumping to conclusions without enough evidence, said University of Chicago dinosaur expert Paul Sereno, who wasn't part of the discovery.

It also reminds us that evolution isn't always what we think, Sereno said.

"This is evolution in a dinosaur -- not a mammal -- world," Sereno said in email. "The starting point is a two-legged animal looking somewhat like a fuzzy-feathered ostrich. Now you want to get really big and suck up lots of soft vegetation. In the end you look like a goofy Michelin ostrich with fuzz and a tail -- not a cow."

Lee figures the tilted wide hips and massive feet show that Deinocheirus was a slow mover and probably grew so big to escape from being regularly feasted on by bigger dinosaurs.

It had a beak that could eat plants, but it also had a massive tongue that created suction for vacuuming up food from the bottoms of streams, lakes and ponds, Lee wrote.

Originally Lee's team couldn't find the dinosaur's skull, but a tip from another researcher led them to recover it from the private market in Germany.

Some kids will soon adopt this dinosaur as their favorite, Holtz said, "and those are kids with a sense of humor."

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New Species Of Massive Dinosaur Discovered In Africa

Researchers have discovered a new species of dinosaur that lived about 100 million years ago and may have weighed as much as several elephants.

The dinosaur, named Rukwatitan bisepultus, was a titanosaurian, a member of the large-bodied sauropods that thrived during the final period of the dinosaur age. The scientists unearthed the fossil in Tanzania, which makes it one of the few titanosaurian specimens recovered in Africa. Most other known examples have come from other regions, especially South America.

The scientists first saw the fossils embedded in a cliff wall in the Rukwa Rift Basin of southwestern Tanzania. With the help of professional excavators and coal miners, the researchers unearthed vertebrae, ribs, limbs and pelvic bones over the course of two field seasons. After performing CT scans of the remains, the investigators determined that the animal was different than other dinosaurs identified before, including those previously discovered in other parts of Africa.

"Using both traditional and new computational approaches, we were able to place the new species within the family tree of sauropod dinosaurs and determine both its uniqueness as a species and to delineate others species with which it is most closely related," study author Eric Gorscak, a doctoral student in biological sciences at Ohio University, said in a statement.

Titanosaurian sauropods were huge herbivorous (plant-eating) dinosaurs with characteristic long necks. Although Rukwatitan was not among the largest of titanosaurians, the investigators estimate that the animal's front legs were about six feet long and that it may have weighed as much as several elephants.

The researchers noted certain similarities between the newly-discovered dinosaur and another titanosaurian, Malawisaurus dixeyi, previously found in Malawi. Still, the two dinosaurs are distinctly different from each other, and from other titanosaurians known from northern Africa, according to study author Patrick O'Connor, a professor of anatomy in the Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Thanks to the new discovery, scientists can now learn more about titanosaurians. So far, the fossils of only four titanosaurians have been found in Africa, compared with more than 30 in South America -- including a humongous specimen unveiled last week, which is believed to be the largest land animal ever found.

"Much of what we know regarding titanosaurian evolutionary history stems from numerous discoveries in South America -- a continent that underwent a steady separation from Africa during the first half of the Cretaceous Period," Gorscak said. "With the discovery of Rukwatitan and study of the material in nearby Malawi, we are beginning to fill a significant gap from a large part of the world."

The study describing the discovery was published Monday in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
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Two New Huge Dinosaurs Discovered

The discoveries of two new huge plant-eating dinosaurs were announced this week, according to reports in PLoS ONE and the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Both boost the number of known dinosaurs from Latin countries.

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The first is Zby atlanticus, which lived 150 million years ago during the Upper Jurassic of what is now Portugal. Its remains were excavated in the town of Paimogo, north of Lourinhã, near a site where dinosaur eggs were also found.

This dinosaur grew to over 62 feet long. It also had wider teeth than most other sauropods.

The size makes sense when you consider that Portugal was also home to some of the biggest meat-eating dinosaurs that ever existed. Girth and height must have given herbivorous Zby atlanticus a fighting chance against predators like Torvosaurus gurneyi, the largest carnivorous dino ever to stomp around what’s now Europe.

Rock star paleontologist Octavio Mateus from the New University of Lisbon helped to discover both of the Portuguese dinosaurs.

The new dino’s unique name, Zby atlanticus, comes from paleontologist Georges Zbyszewski, who hunted for dino remains for many years in Portugal. “Zby” honors him. The “atlanticus” part is due to the present locality of Paimogo, which has a scenic view of the Atlantic Ocean.

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“We thought for a long time that it was a species that was known in Spain, the turiasaurus, but in fact the anatomical differences we began to notice were sufficient for us to reclassify it, not just as a new species but as a new genus for science”, Mateus told The Portugal News Online.

He explained that “various different crests on the bones of its limbs” helped to distinguish Zby atlanticus from other previously documented dinos.

The second new big dinosaur, now added to the record books, is Leinkupal laticauda. It was found in what’s now Argentina and has at least a couple of claims to fame.

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It’s believed to be the first diplodocid from South America, according to Pablo Gallina and colleagues from the Universidad Maimónides and Museo E. Bachmann in Argentina.

Diplodocids are part of a group of sauropod dinosaurs known for their large bodies, as well as extremely long necks and tails.

The size of L. laticauda hasn’t been confirmed yet, but as a diplodocid, it has to be huge.

The other claim to fame is that L. laticauda was the most recent known diplodocid. It lived during the Early Cretaceous period.

Previously it was thought that this group of dinosaurs, which lived throughout the world from the Americas to Africa, died out at the end of the Jurassic. Now we know that wasn’t the case. Perhaps just a single population, represented by Leinkupal laticauda, lived on at least through part of the Early Cretaceous.

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Archaeological, genetic evidence expands views of domestication

Many of our ideas about domestication derive from Charles Darwin, whose ideas in turn were strongly influenced by British animal-breeding practices during the 19th century, a period when landowners vigorously pursued systematic livestock improvement.

It is from Darwin that we inherit the ideas that domestication involved isolation of captive animals from wild species and total human control over breeding and animal care.

But animal management in this industrial setting has been applied too broadly in time and space, said Fiona Marshall, PhD, professor of anthropology at Washington University in St. Louis. It is not representative of the practices of the Neolithic herders who first domesticated animals nor—for that matter—of contemporary herders in nonindustrial societies.

Together with Keith Dobney, PhD, of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland; Tim Denham, PhD, of the Australian National University; and José Capriles, PhD, of the Universidad de Tarapacá in Chile, Marshall wrote a review article that summarizes recent research on the domestication of large herbivores for "The Modern View of Domestication," a special feature of The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published April 29.

Recent research on the domestication of donkeys, camelids (which includes dromedaries, Bactrian camels, llamas and alpacas) pigs, cattle, sheep and goats suggests that neither intentional breeding nor genetic isolation were as significant as traditionally thought, the scientists said.

"Our findings show little control of breeding, particularly of domestic females, and indicate long-term gene flow, or interbreeding, between managed and wild animal populations," Marshall said.

Why is it important to get domestication right? "Our livestock is losing genetic diversity even faster than some wild animals, because of management practices like artificial insemination," Marshall said. "We took only a bit of the diversity from the wild for domestication, and what we're looking at now is lopping it off really fast so we'll be left with little diversity to survive all the climate and disease issues we're facing. It really is a crisis situation.

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New Golden Age for Pterosaurs, Flying Reptiles of the Dinosaur Era

Pterosaurs were the most magnificent fliers of all time. With wings of skin stretched over bone, they soared over the heads of dinosaurs below.

Their ranks included fuzzy little flappers the size of a bat and enormous soaring species with 33-foot (10-meter) wingspans that stood on the ground as tall as a giraffe.

Paleontologists have known about the existence of pterosaurs since the early days of fossil investigation, but researchers are just now getting to know these extinct fliers.

The reptiles are also gaining more attention from the general public. Pterosaurs are often put on exhibit as the "also rans" of the Mesozoic era, presented as window dressing in a world ruled by other, more famous creatures like Tyrannosaurus rex. But this weekend they will fly into the spotlight in the new American Museum of Natural History exhibit "Pterosaur: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs."

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Lizard Has One-Way Breathing; Hints at How Dinosaurs Breathed?

That’s surprising, because the unidirectional airflow of birds was thought to have evolved due to the high-oxygen demands of flight: Instead of being partially filled with stale, depleted air like human lungs, avian lungs contain air with a much higher average oxygen content and are much more efficient at getting oxygen to the blood.

So this method of breathing was generally considered to be unique to both warm-blooded animals and birds.

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Predatory 'king of gore' dinosaur discovered

A new super-predator dinosaur that roamed the Earth 80 million years ago has been discovered in southern Utah.

It was closely related to its slightly larger relative, Tyrannosaurus rex, but lived earlier, making it the largest living land predator of its time.

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Birds Evolved from Maniraptoran Dinosaurs: Study

Researchers from McGill University say that birds have evolved from a group of small, meat-eating theropod dinosaurs called maniraptorans that existed about 150 million years ago.

Many maniraptorans were bird-like as they had small body sizes along with hollow bones, feathers, and high metabolic rates, according to the findings of the researchers.

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Dinosaurs were wired for flight, thanks to bigger brains

A new study in Nature finds that a wider range of dinosaurs may have had the neurological capacity to fly -- not just Archaeopteryx, the feathered dinosaur that’s considered the direct ancestor of birds.

While it’s well-established that birds are modern-day dinosaurs, how they evolved from fearsome, meat-ripping theropods to dainty doves remains a hot topic of research.

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