rhamphotheca:

Big Mean Dinosaur Had Stubby Little Arms and Fat Fingers

by Stephanie Pappas

A fearsome carnivorous dinosaur known for eating its own kind probably wasn’t holding onto its meal as it ate: Its arms were far too short and stubby, a new fossil find suggests.

Majungasaurus crenatissimus was a 21-foot-long (6.4 meters) predator that was “pretty much the top dog” in what is now Madagascar 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous Period, said Stony Brook University graduate student Sara Burch. Burch analyzed a recently discovered, nearly complete forelimb of this ancient animal, the first ever found preserved. In contrast to the dinosaur’s bulky body, Burch found that its arms weren’t even a foot (0.3 meters) long.

“When you get to the lower arm and the hand, it’s really weird,” Burch told LiveScience. “The lower arm is very short but thick, and the bones are pretty robust. So it’s not necessarily a thin, wimpy arm, it’s just very, very short”…

(read more: Live Science)    

(image: Background photo by Joseph J. W. Sertich; 3D reconstruction by Sara H. Burch; composition by Lucille Betti-Nash)

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