Palaeontologists have unearthed a new species of dinosaur with strange claws in Mongolia. A new study published Tuesday (Mar 25) in the journal iScience revealed that the new genus and species is a therizinosaur, which is a plant-eating, two-legged giant with long claws.

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A group of dinosaurs, which are quite weird, was found buried in the Gobi Desert during the construction of a water pipeline. These creatures have two-fingered hands have a pair of curved claws.

The dinosaur, named Duonychus tsogtbaatari, measured about 10 feet (3 meters) long and weighed approximately 575 pounds (260 kg). Its claws measured about a foot (30 cm) long. The experts have estimated that they lived roughly 90 to 95 million years ago during the Cretaceous Period. 

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The researchers have noted that Duonychus belonged to therizinosaurs, which is a medium-sized member of a group of awkward-looking dinosaurs. They were distinguished by their large claws on their hands, feathers on their bodies, a rotund midsection, a small skull and a long neck. 

The one found in the Gobi Desert is slightly different. Other therizinosaurs have three fingers on their hands, but this new species only has two fingers, which also inspired its scientific name Duonychus - a Greek word for "two digits". The name also honours the Mongolian palaeontologist Khishigjav Tsogtbaatar. 

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"Therizinosaurs are some of the weirdest dinosaurs ever. They were theropods - so, related to meat-eaters - but they looked like giant feathered sloths," palaeontologist Yoshitsugu Kobayashi of Hokkaido University Museum in Japan, lead author of the research published on Tuesday in the journal iScience said as quoted by news agency Reuters. 

"Duonychus takes that weirdness even further. It had this short, two-fingered hand with claws like a raptor (swift meat-eating dinosaurs), but it used them to eat plants. It's like evolution said, 'Let's try something totally new.' And it worked," Kobayashi said. 

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The skeleton recovered was incomplete as it didn't have a skull and legs, but the arms and hands were well-preserved. One of the claws retained its outer covering - a sheath of keratin, the same material as in our fingernails - rather than just the underlying bone. The keratin sheath added more than 40% to the claw's length. 

"These were big, sharp and nasty claws," palaeontologist and study co-author Darla Zelenitsky of the University of Calgary in Canada said as quoted by Reuters. 

While mentioning the keratin fossilisation, Kobayashi said that's "incredibly rare" and "it gives us an extraordinary window into how these dinosaurs actually used their hands in life. The hands are beautifully preserved and show a ton of detail, including fused wrist bones, stiff joints and the two massive claws." 

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What's special with dinos with two fingers? 

Digit reduction, or the evolutionary loss of fingers or toes, makes the analysis of duonychus interesting. Eight fingers were present in the earliest land animals. Like humans, the earliest dinosaurs had five-fingered hands, but over time, many dinosaur lineages lost fingers.

Five lineages of theropods are now known to have independently evolved just two fingers on each hand, thanks to the discovery of Duonychus. The most well-known of these was Tyrannosaurus Rex, a tyrannosaur whose small limbs were wildly out of proportion to its massive skull and thorax. 

"With dinosaurs that grasped vegetation during foraging, one would think more fingers would be better. That was obviously not the case with Duonychus, as its hand construction with two fingers seemed to suit it just fine. I suspect it may have had a specialized feeding behavior or food source," Zelenitsky said.

"Tyrannosaurs were hypercarnivorous beasts with massive skulls and jaws designed for seizing and killing prey," Zelenitsky added. "For them, the fingers and arms were probably reduced because they were pretty useless compared to their skull." 

(With inputs from agencies)