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Palaeontology

Mystery of the horrible hands solved

Nature volume 515, pages 203–205 (2014)Cite this article

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A pair of newly discovered 70-million-year-old fossils from Mongolia — including material previously lost to poaching — reveals the true nature of one of the most enigmatic dinosaur species, Deinocheirus mirificus. See Letter p.257

Although some species of fossil vertebrate are known from hundreds or even thousands of individual skeletons, most are known from the incomplete remains of a single individual, making it difficult to infer the organism's anatomy, ecology and evolutionary origins. This is especially troubling when the fragmentary remains point to animals of unusual appearance. Thankfully, continued fieldwork can lead to the discovery of additional remains and help to fill the gaps in our knowledge. Such is the case for Deinocheirus mirificus, a dinosaur found in the Nemegt Formation in Mongolia, which dates to around 70 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period. Deinocheirus was known only from a gigantic pair of arms and a few isolated bones — until now. On page 257 of this issue, Lee et al.1 describe two new skeletons of Deinocheirus, which add together to give us a nearly complete anatomy of this previously mysterious animal.

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Figure 1: A dinosaur emerges.

Michael Skrepnick

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  1. Thomas R. Holtz Jr is in the Department of Geology, and in the Department of Paleobiology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA.,

    Thomas R. Holtz Jr

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  1. Thomas R. Holtz Jr
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Correspondence to Thomas R. Holtz Jr.

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Holtz, T. Mystery of the horrible hands solved. Nature 515, 203–205 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature13930

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