Tuesday, May 13, 2014

What the Hell Deinocheirus?

So, late last year, I did a post on the new remains of Deinocheirus. For nearly 60 years, all we knew was its arms. These giant ass arms. Some thought predator, others tought ornithomimosaur. As it turns out, it is the latter, and late last year the body was found. It showed Deinocheirus had a hump, like a camel. The only thing missing was it's head. The head was stolen by some poachers who smuggled it all the way back to Europe. There, authorities picked up the skull and now we know what it looks like. For a while, people assumed the weirdest Deinocheirus got was its hump. And all the evidence pointed it to be a tree browser; until now.... Now, the skull shows Deinocheirus is even weirder than we ever thought. It's a freaking ornithomimosaur trying to be a camel and a hadrosaur, really hard!

Now I have seen a lot of comments on the internets that this could be a gaff, or misidentification, simply because it looks too much like a hadrosaur head. As far as I know, the skull was not faked, and from what the scientists said, it fit the rest of the body perfectly, thought how they do is something I want to know. The front half of the skull is hadrosaur. However, the eye sockets, and the rest of it is very ornithomimosaurian.
So, what niche did it fill? This skull is not what you expect from a browser. And why is Deinocheirus in Nemegt? To get an idea of what nice it may have filled, lets review its contemporaries. We have the bizarre (not as much so as Deinocheirus) Therizinosaurus, who probably used its long claws to pull down branches from trees and strip the leaves, so its a browser. Then, we have Saurolophus, a hadrosaur, and it probably was a grazer. Deinocheirus has a hadrosaur skull, so that suggest grazer, but, hadrosaurs are very common. The niche is filled. What the heck is his niche!? Well, I have heard one theory, stating that Deinocheirus actually did not live in Nemegt, but came from other lands to explore. I'm not too sure about that, but I do think it is possible. I believe that it was a weird combination of browser and grazer, but hey, I'm no paleontologist, or deinocheirologist. I really am excited, and finally, we have solved one of the longest mysteries from Inner Mongolia. I want this hybrid creep to be a documentary this very minute now. No reason it shouldn't be.

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