A "reaper" dinosaur with enormous claws was discovered in Japan.

 

The herbivore dug through the soil with its claws, which gave the impression of danger.

 

There was a dinosaur that roamed the beaches of the Asian continent many millions of years ago that was bipedal and had blades for fingertips. According to a new study, the Edward Scissorhands-like weapons were not utilized to mutilate animal prey but to chop up vegetation.

 

The dinosaur was a member of a group of animals known as therizinosaurs, three-toed bipedal dinosaurs that lived from 145 million to 66 million years ago during the Cretaceous period. The majority of the therizinosaurs were herbivorous. Researchers from Japan and the United States have just described the fossil of the youngest therizinosaur ever found in Japan. This fossil is particularly notable for being the first therizinosaur fossil ever identified in marine strata anywhere in Asia. The researchers came up with the name Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus for the newly discovered species represented by this fossil. The scientific community was previously familiar with the genus, which translates to "reptile by the sea" in Greek and Latin; the species name pays homage to Japan, where the specimen was discovered.

 

A different group of researchers discovered the fossil in 2008; since then, it has been kept in the Nakagawa Museum of Natural History collections in Hokkaido, Japan. The fossil is in the shape of a hook and includes a portion of a vertebra, a portion of a wrist, and a forefoot.

 

Nakagawa, a district in Hokkaido located on the northernmost of Japan's main islands, is noted for its abundant fossil beds; this is where Japanese experts discovered the species. At its discovery, paleontologists said the fossil "was believed to belong to a therizinosaur." However, due to a lack of comparative data at the time, the original researchers could not draw any definitive conclusions, representatives of Hokkaido University said in a statement. The fossil was encased in a concretion, a hardened mineral deposit.

 

However, additional information obtained from many other fossils that were found and described in the years that followed the discovery of the fossil in question has aided with the classification of the fossil-based on the morphology of the forefoot claw. Because of this, a different group of paleontologists investigated the fossil once more to get some conclusive answers.

 

The authors of the new study concluded, based on their research, that the fossil, which is just under ten centimeters (four inches) in length, belonged to a therizinosaur that existed approximately 80 million to 82 million years ago. The fossil measures just under ten centimeters (four inches). The dinosaur's claw, which resembled a sword and was used to comb through the foliage in search of edible plants, was formerly held in the petrified bone of its foot. According to the statement, the researchers concluded that the specimen was a derived therizinosaur, a member of the group that evolved later in its lineage, as opposed to a basal, or early, therizinosaur, which had claws that were "generalized and not for specific use." The researchers came to this conclusion because they believed the animal used its claws for a particular purpose.

 

According to Anthony Fiorillo, a research professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, who was also a co-author of the study, "[this dinosaur] used its claws as foraging tools, rather than tools of aggression, to draw shrubs and trees closer to its mouth to eat." Live Science quoted Fiorillo as saying this. We suppose it passed away on land and was carried out to sea by the water.

 

The research indicates that therizinosaur fossils have been discovered in North America and Asia (specifically in what is now Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska). Over time, the animals adapted to living in coastal environments. The fossils have been found throughout Asia and in what is now Denali National Park and Preserve in Alaska. In the past, Japan has been the site of discovering two additional possible therizinosaur fossils. However, these fossils have not yet been published.

 

According to Fiorillo, who Live Science interviewed, it is hard to determine how big the therizinosaur was based on this specimen. According to the University of California Museum of Paleontology, one thing that scientists can say with absolute certainty about the dinosaur is that it was "sizeable," possibly reaching the size of a hadrosaur, also known as a duck-billed dinosaur, which could grow to be 30 feet (9 meters) long and weigh up to 3 tons (2.7 metric tons). Because the fossil has been kept in such good condition, Fiorillo believes that "we could find more of the animal if we revisited the original location."

 

Fiorillo, also a curator emeritus at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, stated, "We continue to maintain a level of circumspect optimism, and it's on our radar."

Article source : https://www.livescience.com/reaper-reptile-by-the-sea-dinosaur-japan

Image source : https://pixabay.com/id/photos/misteri-pulau-dinosaurus-tengkorak-1599527/

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