New Primitive Dinosaur Used Claws to Hunt Termites

Sometime in 2004, the Xinjiang Autonomous Region in China provided experts with the fossilized remains of a dinosaur that could not be cataloged. At that time, experts who had seen it had proposed that the creature was part of a new species, and their predictions eventually turned out to be true. The animal was named Haplocheirus sollers (“simple, skillful hand”), and its major traits were subject to rigorous analysis. As this was done, experts learned a great deal about this small lizard.

For one, its body was covered in feathers, but its teeth were long and serrated. According to the investigators, it may be that the animals also used their claws to basically hunt termites out of their nests, which would make it one of the first animals ever to do so. The fossil, which endured for more than 160 million years, is believed to have belonged to an individual that was at least 7 feet long (2 meters) and weighed roughly 33 pounds (15 kg). The team investigating these bones also concluded that the creature was a member of the peculiar-looking, feathered dinosaur group Alvarezsauridae.

George Washington University investigator Jonah Choiniere, who was a researcher on the new study, says that the earliest proof that Alvarezsauridae existed came from fossils that were “only” 85 million years old. One of the defining traits for these animals was their short, stubby arms, and also the fact that they only had a single large claw on their hands, flanked by several that were considerably smaller “Haplocheirus is a transitional fossil, because it shows an early evolutionary step in how the bizarre hands of later alvarezsaurs evolved from earlier predatory dinosaurs,” Choiniere explains, quoted by LiveScience.

It is additionally believed that these animals were proficient termite eaters. One of the things that lead scientists to believe that is the shape and size of the animals' teeth, which seem very similar to those of modern anteaters. “When the alvarezsauroids were initially discovered only about 15 years ago the prevailing hypothesis was that they were birds – a lineage within birds that had lost flight ability. And so what Haplocheirus shows is really that alvarezsauroids are not birds, but it pushes them further down the evolutionary tree,” the expert concludes.