‘2-fingered’ dinosaur discovered in Gobi

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom announced on October 8 that they have discovered a new species of a “parrot-shaped” dinosaur in the Mongolian Gobi.

This type of omnivorous dinosaur, which has no teeth and no feathers, has been known to have existed for almost a 100 million years and is now called oviraptor. The new species, found in Mongolia, lived 68 million years ago, and its front limbs differ from those of other similar species by having only two fingers.

All other oviraptors have three fingers on their front limbs. The new species, called Oksoko avarsan, was found to live in herds, and grew as tall as 2 meters in height. This is evidenced by the fact that during the excavations, many fossil skeletons were found at once.

"The most important part of this discovery is to study how the anterior toes of oviraptors evolved from three to two," the report published in the Royal Society Open Science said.

Researchers from the University of Alberta, Canada, the University of Hokkaido, Japan, and the Mongolian Academy of Sciences participated in the study.

Dr. Gregory Funston of the University of Edinburgh's School of Geosciences, who led the study, said, "Oksoko avarsan is interesting because the skeletons are very complete and the way they were preserved resting together shows that juveniles roamed together in groups. But more importantly, its two-fingered hand prompted us to look at the way the hand and forelimb changed throughout the evolution of oviraptors, which hadn't been studied before. This revealed some unexpected trends that are a key piece in the puzzle of why oviraptors were so diverse before the extinction that killed the dinosaurs.