Deinocheirus
The Terrible Hand
For 50 YEARS, Deinocheirus was just a pair of arms.
But what poor people! Each was 2.4 meters long and ended in three 20 centimeter long claws.
The hands alone measured 60 cm.
The paleontologists Halszka Osmólska and Ewa Roniewicz, who discovered this beast in the Nemegt Formation in the Mongolian province of Ömnö-Gobi-Aimag, therefore named it Deinocheirus mirificus:
“Terrible hand”.
| Profile | Deinocheirus |
|---|---|
| epoch | late Upper Cretaceous, 72 to 69 million years ago |
| Order | Lizard-pelvis dinosaur (Saurischia) |
| Subordination | Theropoda |
| Family | Coelurosauria |
| group | Ornithomimosauria |
| genus | Deinocheirus |
| Art | Deinocheirus mirificus |
| Height | 3.5 meters |
| length | 11 meters |
| Weight | 6.4 tons |
| Locations | Mongolia |
Look
Deinocheirus was a large, probably feathered theropoda dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous period in what is now Asia. This dinosaur was unusually large for its time, growing up to 9 meters long and weighing up to 4.5 tons (~5.5 short tons).
Deinocheirus had a very long, S-shaped neck, a short, massive body, and a long tail. Its head was relatively large compared to other Ornithomimosauria, which explains the S-shaped curvature of the neck.
Since the bony 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 only in the 1990s that additional fossils showed that Deinocheirus belongs to the Ornithomimosauria, the “bird-mimicking lizards”.
Image sources: FunkMonk (Michael B. H.), CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Size comparison: 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