For 50 YEARS Deinocheirus was only a pair of arms.
But what arms! Each was 2.4 meters long and ended in three 20 centimeter long claws.
The hands alone measured 60cm.
That's why paleontologists Halszka Osmólska and Ewa Roniewicz, who discovered this beast in the Nemegt Formation in Mongolia's Ömnö-Gobi Aimag Province, named it Deinocheirus mirificus ;
"Terrible Hand".
| Profile | Deinocheirus |
|---|---|
| Prehistoric Era | late Upper Cretaceous , 72 to 69 million years ago |
| Order | Saurischia |
| Suborder | Theropoda |
| Family | Coelurosauria |
| Tribe | Ornithomimosauria |
| Genus | Deinocheirus |
| Species | Deinocheirus mirificus |
| Height | 3.5 meter |
| Length | 11 meter |
| Weight | 6.4 tons |
| Territory | Mongolei |
Deinocheirus was a large, probably feathered theropod dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period in what is now Asia.
This dinosaur was unusually large for its time, growing up to 11 meters long and weighing up to 6.4tons (~5.5 short tons).
Deinocheirus had a very long neck curved in an S-shape, a short, massive body, a long tail. Its head was relatively large compared to other Ornithomimosauria, which explains the S-shaped curvature of the neck.
Because the bone rings surrounding its eyes were small, Deinocheirus was probably diurnal.
Deinocheirus was first discovered in 1965 by a Polish-Mongolian expedition in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. It was not until the 1990s that additional fossils showed that Deinocheirus belonged to the Ornithomimosauria, the "bird mimicking lizards".
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Image source: FunkMonk (Michael B. H.), CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Size: Conty, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Skull: Derdadort, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Deinocheirus Arms: Eduard Solà, CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
