Community | January 25, 2011 | 3 comments

Tiny T-Rex relative found with only one finger

A tiny relative of the fearsome Tyrannosaurus rex has been discovered in China boasting  only a single claw on each hand.

Linhenykus monodactylus wouldn't have weighed more than a parrot and was found in sediments between 84 and 75 million years old.

The dinosaur belongs to a sub-branch of the theropods, the dinosaur group which includes T.rex and Velociraptor, and which gave rise to modern birds.

The new species was named after the Chinese city of Linhe in inner Mongolia, near where its fossilised remains was uncovered.

The international team of scientists found a partial skeleton, including bones of the vertebrae, forelimb, hind limbs, and a partial pelvis.

It's part of the Alvarezsauroidea family of theropods, a group of small, long-legged dinosaurs, known for their strange and tiny arms.

Michael Pittman of University College London, who was part of the team, says the animal would hardly have been intimidating.

"You'd see a very small animal, probably below your hip height, with a very small skull. It's not very threatening because its teeth are very small compared to other carnivorous dinosaurs and there's some evidence it may have been an insectivore," he told the BBC.

What is striking and slightly special looking  is the animal's unusual claws.

"Non-avian theropods start with five fingers but evolved to have only three fingers in later forms," he says. "Tyrannosaurs were unusual in having just two fingers but the one-fingered Linhenykus shows how extensive and complex theropod hand modifications really were."

Why do the fingers disappear?


The suggestion is that this mono-digit theropod may represent the end of one evolutionary pathway, in which unused digits disappear as part of a process of natural selection.

Professor Xu Xing, who led the international team of researchers said the discovery showed that the evolution of theropods was more complex than originally thought. Some species had a big finger and two small ones. Experts had surmised that the creatures used the large one to dig with and that it became stronger over time while the smaller ones were not used and were eventually lost.

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