EGU Blogs

Therizinosaurs

Grim reaper or gentle giants?

Therizinosaurs were some of the true freaks of the dinosaur world. I mean that in the nicest possible way for something that looked like the sick offspring of a giant chicken and Freddie Kruger. Perhaps the weirdest things about them were these long, scythe-like claws, that although may have seemed deadly, probably weren’t unless you were a particularly scrummy looking piece of foliage. That’s right, these cousins of tyrannosaurs and other theropods used their wicked sickle-claws for trimming hedges for food.

Flandersaurus?

Flandersaurus?

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Erlikosaurus, the little dinosaur experiment

The evolutionary line from theropod dinosaurs is absolute. There is no question that this is one of the greatest stories that life on Earth has ever told us, But evolution is not linear; it’s chaotic. It’s bizarre. Along this theropod line, dinosaurs were experimenting – they were the evolutionary scientists of their time.

One of the weirdest things that theropods did was become herbivores again – this is exceptionally odd when we consider that they’re the cousins of epic carnivores like Tyrannosaurus and Deinonychus.

Therizinosaurs were one of these groups of hipster dinosaurs. Not content with a life dining on raw steak, they actually estranged themselves and became ecological innovators, eventually turning herbivorous.

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