Newly Described Dinosaur Used Its Massive Sword-Like Claws to Forage For Shrubs

A bipedal dinosaur with knives for fingers prowled the shores of the Asian continent millions of years ago. The EdwardScissorhandslike weapons were used to slash vegetation rather than kill animals.

Therizinosaurs were a group of bipedal and herbivorous three-toed dinosaurs that lived during the Cretaceous period. The oldest therizinosaur fossil ever found in Japan was described recently by researchers from Japan and the United States.

The researchers named the new species Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus, which means "reptile by the sea" in Japanese.

The fossil was discovered by a different team of researchers in 2008 and has been in the collections at the Nakagawa Museum of Natural History in Hokkaido, Japan.

(Masato Hattori)

The district of Nakagawa in Hokkaido is known for its rich fossil deposits.

The fossil was encased in a hardened mineral deposit, and at the time of its discovery, paleontologists said it was believed to belong to the arizinosaur, though due to a lack of comparative data at the time, they were unable to draw any.

The shape of the forefoot claw was used to classify the fossil based on new data from other fossils. A new team of paleontologists reexamined the specimen to get some answers.

The authors of the new study concluded that the fossil was that of arizinosaur, a reptile that lived 80 million to 80 million years ago.

The claw of the dinosaur was once held by the foot bone.

A fossilized claws of Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus. (Yoshitusgu Kobayashi)

The specimen was determined to be a derived therizinosaur, rather than an early therizinosaur with claws that were generalized, because researchers suspected that the animal used its claws for a specific purpose.

The lead study author said that the dinosaur used its claws to draw shrubs and trees closer to its mouth. It was washed out to the sea.

The study states that therizinosaur fossils have been found in Asia and in North America, and that the animals adapted to living in coastal environments.

There are two more suspected therizinosaur fossils that have not been described.

It's not possible to know how large the therizinosaur was based on this specimen alone.

According to the University of California, the dinosaur could be as big as a duck-billed dinosaur and weigh up to three tons.

If we went back to the original site we could find more of the animal.

"We are cautiously optimistic, and it is on our radar," said Fiorillo, who is also a curator.

The findings were published in a journal.

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The original article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.