New dinosaur species found in Japan; had massive sword-like claws

 New dinosaur species found in Japan; had massive sword-like claws

Palaeontologists have unearthed a new genus of therizinosaurid dinosaur that lived during the Cretaceous time in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan.

Dubbed Paralitherizinosaurus japonicus, this new division of dinosaur roamed all over the shores of Asia between 66 million and 145 million years ago.

The top remarkable aspect of this species is that it had sword-like claws, like Edward Scissorhands, and that were used not for eviscerating animal prey but rather to slash vegetation as it was a herbivore division , the study said.

This dinosaur belonged to a category known as therizinosaurs — bipedal and primarily herbivorous three-toed dinosaurs that lived during the Cretaceous time .

“[This dinosaur] used its claws as foraging tools, rather than tools of aggression, to draw shrubs and trees closer to its mouth to eat," study co-author Anthony Fiorillo, a research professor in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, told Live Science. "We trust it died on land and was washed out to sea." The fossil was found by tester from Japan and the United States in 2008. They had described it as the junior therizinosaur fossil ever found in the Asian nation . It as well as happens to be the first to be found in Asia in marine sediments. The fossil was encased in a concretion — a hardened mineral deposit — and at the time of its unsolved , The hook-shaped fossil, and that involve a partial vertebra and a partial wrist and forefoot, is kept in the collections at the Nakagawa Museum of Natural History in Hokkaido, Japan. Initially, it was trust to be in to a therizinosaur, but due to a lack of relative data at the time, the original researchers were unable to draw any definitive conclusions, typical of Hokkaido academy said in a assertion. even so , new data from many more other fossils that were uncover since that time have helped with classifying the fossil based on the shape of the forefoot claw. This prompted a new team of paleontologists to revisit the specimen to get some definitive reply . Based on their analysis, the authors of the new study finish that the fossil, and that count only below 4 inches (10 centimetres) in length, be in to a therizinosaur that lived about 80 million to 82 million years ago, the assertion said.

The findings were published online on May 3 in the journal Scientific Reports.