A team of scientists have given further details about the fossil of a Tongtianlong limosus dinosaur, a species that roamed on earth about 15 million years before dinosaurs became extinct.
“They just look weird,” said Dr Stephen L Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland and one of the authors of the paper.
The first fossil remains of these dinosaurs were discovered about a century ago. The most recent and well-preserved fossil of a dinosaur from this group (oviraptorosaurs) was found about four years ago. The fossil remains of this particular dinosaur named Tongtianlong limosus were unearthed from Ganzhou region in China.
“This one was found by workmen who were blasting with dynamite,” Dr Brusatte said. “It’s a fine line sometimes between discovery and knowing nothing.”
“They very nearly dynamited it into billions of pieces, but thankfully they placed the dynamite just far enough away from the skeleton that most of it survived the blast,” Dr. Brusatte told FoxNews.com.
“I wasn’t there when it was found, but they must have realized right away that they had found something important, and it’s great that the fossil was conserved by a museum rather than sold off or auctioned away, where it would have been lost to science forever.”
According to Dr Brusatte, it appeared like an “alien” and had a pug-nose skull and a crest. It had an unusual posture with limbs splayed and head raised. It was most likely trapped in a quagmire and died while attempting to pull itself out. This dinosaur, nicknamed the ‘Mud Dragon’ was about the size of an adult donkey, and was a close relative of birds. Despite having wings, it was unable to fly, and relied on its feet to flee from predators, including tyrannosaur Qianzhousaurus.
The fossil was studied by Dr Junchang Lu, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Beijing. Dr Lu had earlier examined fossils of another oviraptorosaur discovered from Ganzhou. Dr Brusatte Dr Lu in this study.
“It is the first oviraptorid dinosaur preserved as struggling,” Dr Lu wrote in an email.
According to scientists, oviraptorosaurs were not direct ancestors of birds, but there was a common theropod ancestor with the lineage that later evolved to birds, and had teeth, though, not beaks. Oviraptorosaurs were feathered dinos and had sharp beaks and short, toothless heads.
“They were still diversifying during those last few million years of the Cretaceous, so they are a sign that dinosaurs were still doing really well right up towards the end,” Dr Brusatte said. “It was these dinosaurs that were undergoing the final wave of diversification before everything changed that day the asteroid hit.”
It is unclear what Tongtianlong and other oviraptorosaurs were eating to survive. Dr Brusatte said thinks it most likely ate plants, nuts, insects, small animals or mollusks, or perhaps a variety of foods.
All the six oviraptorosaur species discovered in Ganzhou are very dissimilar from each other, suggesting rapid evolution of these dinosaurs.
The detailed findings of the study have been published in the journal Scientific Reports.
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