Newly Discovered Dinosaur Looks Like a Nightmare Goose

Paleontologists found a 71-million-year-old carnivorous dinosaur in Southern Mongolia that they imagine had a physique constructed for swimming and diving for prey. Though it seems rather a lot like a contemporary hen, it’s truly a non-avian dinosaur, that means it’s possible an instance of convergent evolution, a phenomenon through which unrelated creatures evolve comparable traits.

The dinosaur is known as Natovenator polydontus, or “swimming hunter with many teeth.” Recent evaluation of its fossilized stays point out the animal was bipedal and constructed for diving. A full description of the newly found animal is published in Communications Biology.

“Finding semi-aquatic dinosaurs means that the ecological diversity was very high in dinosaurs,” Yuong-Nam Lee, a paleontologist at Seoul National University and the lead creator of the research, wrote in an e mail to Gizmodo. “More than 30 different lineages of tetrapods have independently invaded water ecosystems. Why not for dinosaurs?”

Besides its many tooth, N. polydontus had a slender physique and an extended neck. From the rump up, the extinct dinosaur might have seemed rather a lot like a goose or a cormorant, a contemporary diving hen, however it had an extended tail. The skeleton is incomplete—the researchers discovered its cranium, backbone, a forelimb, and a few of two hindlimbs—however animal’s morphology could possibly be deduced from the discovered stays.

“The angle between each rib shaft and its associated articulating vertebra is very low, like many diving birds, but in contrast to terrestrial theropods,” Lee mentioned. “Certain extant diving birds–akin to alcids and phalacrocoracids–even have posteriorly extending ribs. In these animals, backward-oriented ribs assist swimming by making the physique extra streamlined.

Lee’s workforce hopes they’ll discover the abdomen contents of the hen, to be taught extra about its food plan. That kind of discovery will not be with out precedent; final yr, paleontologists discovered the fossilized marine equal of a turducken in modern-day Germany.

Also final yr, a unique workforce made up of lots of the identical researchers behind the brand new paper introduced the invention of an armored ankylosaur from the identical area in Mongolia. They posited that the ankylosaurs might have dug defensive trenches when threatened, a lot like trendy horned lizards.

More fossils will should be discovered to raised check these concepts, however taken collectively, the fossils are exhibiting the dynamism of biodiversity within the Cretaceous.

More: Paleontologists Find Evidence of Dinosaurs Nesting Near the North Pole