The fossil is the first to be found in Asia in marine sediments.
A new study has revealed that a finger-sharp bipedal dinosaur roamed the coasts of Asia between 66 and 145 million years ago.
According to Live Science, the new genus and species of dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous period was identified from the fossilized remains discovered in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan. The fossil is the first to be found in Asia in marine sediments, researchers from the United States and Japan have reported.
A new species of terizinosaurid has been identified from fossilized claws discovered in Hokkaido, Japan: Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus.
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The fossil represents a recently described species, which researchers called “Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus”. According to the study, the dinosaur belonged to a group known as Therizinosaurs: bipedal dinosaurs and mainly three-fingered herbivores.
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The most notable aspect of this species is that it had sword-like claws. The researchers explained that Edward Scissorhands-like weapons were used to cut down vegetation instead of gutting animal prey.
“[This dinosaur] used his claws as feeding tools, rather than aggressive tools, to bring shrubs and trees closer to his mouth to eat, ”co-author of the study Anthony Fiorillo, a research professor in the Department of Earth Sciences Roy M. Huffington of Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, he told Live Science.
“We believe he died on land and crawled into the sea,” Fiorillo added.
The hook-shaped fossil with a partial vertebra and a partial wrist and forefoot was originally discovered in 2008 at the fossil-rich Osoushinai Formation in Hokkaido, Japan, by a different team of researchers. The fossil was embedded in a concretion – a hardened mineral deposit – at the time of its discovery, and was previously believed to belong to a terizinosaur.
However, due to a lack of comparative data at the time, the original researchers were unable to draw any definitive conclusions, Hokkaido University officials said in a statement. Now, with the evolution of data to classify the terizinosaurus according to the morphology of the claws of the forefoot, scientists decided to review the fossil.
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From their analysis, the authors of the new study concluded that the fossil belonged to a terizinosaur. Based on the specimen alone, it is impossible to know for sure what size the terizinosaurus was, Fiorillo told Live Science. However, he added that the dinosaur was “big”, which could reach 30 feet (9 meters) long and weigh up to 3 tons.