![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Day 22: Therizinosaurus cheloniformis! The exclamation mark is wholly warranted, trust me. If ever there were proof that Evolution likes its whisky neat, it's Therizinosaurus. Around twice as tall as our waving, size-guide man, and a good nine metres long, pot-bellied, covered in feathers (or feather-like integument), and with a metre-long claw on each finger, Therizinosaurus looked a bit like something out of Pan's Labyrinth. It was a herbivore though (probably!), and presumably used the claws to slash up vegetation rather than other dinosaurs. It was a theropod, a group of bipedal dinosaurs that were overwhelmingly carnivorous, so it may have started out that way and evolved. Sort of like a panda then, both in terms of diet and general absurdity.
From Mongolia in the late Cretaceous (c. 70 million years ago), Therizinosaurus was something of a mystery for years, as people kept finding odd bits like claws and hands, and wondering what the bloody hell they'd unearthed. Palaeontology is always a bit like putting together a jigsaw without the picture on the front of the box, though as you learn more, and find more, it is possible to use comparative anatomy and educated guesswork to help out. And then sometimes you find a disassociated bit of Therizinosaurus in the desert, and are left boggling for half a century.
Therizinosaurus. What happens when Evolution has a night on the tiles.
From Mongolia in the late Cretaceous (c. 70 million years ago), Therizinosaurus was something of a mystery for years, as people kept finding odd bits like claws and hands, and wondering what the bloody hell they'd unearthed. Palaeontology is always a bit like putting together a jigsaw without the picture on the front of the box, though as you learn more, and find more, it is possible to use comparative anatomy and educated guesswork to help out. And then sometimes you find a disassociated bit of Therizinosaurus in the desert, and are left boggling for half a century.
Therizinosaurus. What happens when Evolution has a night on the tiles.
Tags:
From:
no subject
I don't think you could have come up with a better explanation!
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject