Fossils paint portrait of dino-ostrich

What's got claws, a humpback, big hips, a long snout and looks like a giant ostrich? Deinocheirus mirificus, of course.

Scientists have fleshed out one of the most mysterious dinosaurs by completing a kind of fossil bone jigsaw puzzle.

If you thought selling the platypus as a real, live animal to European doubters might have been hard, spare a thought for these palaeontologists.

The picture they paint of Deinocheirus mirificus in the journal Nature is of a giant, hump-back, big-bottomed, duck-billed, clawed ostrich.

Yuong-Nam Lee of the Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources and colleagues have two nearly complete skeletons pieced together from fossils unearthed in Mongolia, along with a recovered skull and hand that had been poached and sold to private collectors.

Their analyses suggests Deinocheirus was the largest member of the ornithomimosaurs, a group of dinosaurs that bore a superficial resemblance to ostriches.

This beast had been known only from two gigantic arms for almost 50 years.

Now the new research says one of the two skeletons has a predicted body length of 11 metres and an estimated body weight of 6358 kilograms.

It's got broad hips and large feet, suggesting the dinosaur was a slow mover.

What's more, the article says, the skeletons have unique features not seen in other ornithomimosaurs, such as an elongated snout and a humped back.

The scientists think a duck-like bill may have helped it to forage for food at the bottom of streams and blunt, flattened bones under their claws may have prevented it from sinking on wet ground.

The fossils even came with what seemed to be stomach contents - fish.

But the Deinocheirus skeletons also have features associated with plant consumption, suggesting they were omnivores.


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