Paralitherizinosaurus
Paralitherizinosaurus was a strange, plant-eating dinosaur with long, curved claws on its hands. It lived near the coast of ancient Japan and used its claws to pull leaves and branches toward its mouth. This dinosaur was covered in feathers and looked a bit like a giant, slow-moving bird.14
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as long as 4 dogs nose to tail🍌as long as 20 bananas end to end🍉as heavy as 56 watermelons🧸as heavy as 15 kindergarten kids🎒as heavy as 9 school kids🏃could run 100 metres in 13 seconds (the fastest human needs 9.6)How big was Paralitherizinosaurus compared to YOU?
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Fun facts
Paralitherizinosaurus is the youngest therizinosaur ever found in Japan, living about 83 to 72 million years ago.1
Its fossils were discovered in a marine rock layer, meaning it lived near the coast and its body washed out to sea after death.1
Only a partial hand and a single vertebra have been found, but those bones show it had very slender, curved claws like its relative Therizinosaurus.1
The first bone of its thumb (metacarpal I) was flattened from top to bottom, a unique feature that helps scientists tell it apart from other dinosaurs.1
Its claws had weak flexor tubercles (the bump where a muscle attaches), which means it used a hook-and-pull motion to bring branches to its mouth, not to slash or stab.1
Paralitherizinosaurus is one of the few therizinosaurs found in marine sediments anywhere in the world, along with Nothronychus from North America.1
Most asked questions about Paralitherizinosaurus
?What did Paralitherizinosaurus eat?
It was a plant-eater. It used its long, curved claws to hook and pull leaves and branches toward its mouth.1
?How big was Paralitherizinosaurus?
Nobody knows for sure because only a partial hand and a neck bone have been found. It was probably medium-sized, but its exact size is unknown.3
?Did Paralitherizinosaurus have feathers?
Yes, it was a feathered theropod dinosaur, related to other feathered dinosaurs like Therizinosaurus. It probably looked like a big, slow-moving bird.3
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For dino experts
- Scientific name
- Paralitherizinosaurus
- Named by
- Kobayashi et al. 20224
- Group
- Odd feathered dinos
- Family / clade
- Therizinosauridae4
- Classification
- Theropoda > Therizinosauria4
- Age of the rocks
- 84 to 72 million years (Campanian)4
- Rock formations
- Osoushinai4
- Countries
- Japan4
- Fossil records
- 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
- Discovery
- The first fossils of Paralitherizinosaurus were found in a concretion (a hard rock nodule) near a river in Hokkaido, Japan. Scientists Murakami and colleagues first described the bones in 2008, but it was not until 2022 that Kobayashi and his team named it as a new species.1
- Still debated
- Scientists are not sure exactly where Paralitherizinosaurus fits on the therizinosaur family tree. It might be closely related to Therizinosaurus, Suzhousaurus, and another unnamed form from the Bissekty Formation, but the relationships are still debated.1
Where the facts come from
- New therizinosaurid dinosaur from the marine Osoushinai Formation (Upper Cretaceous, Japan) provides insight for function and evolution of therizinosaur claws (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus | Dinosaur Database by DinoAnimals.com (dinoanimals.com)
- Paralitherizinosaurus (en.wikipedia.org)
- Paralitherizinosaurus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.
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