Approximately 79 million years ago, a stout feathered dinosaur similar to the velociraptor, but with two sharp claws on each foot, caused terror in what is now Romania. Your name:Bondoc dragon, which means “chunky dragon”.
The fossil found consists of apartial skeletonIt includes a leg, hip, arms, a hand, ribs, and tail bones. The remains reveal that the species hada big thumb with a big clawthat could be extended, possibly to cut off prey, plus another claw on the second finger. It had short, sturdy legs, with fused bones, and a bone and muscle structure more adapted to strength than speed. Its atrophied upper limbs suggest that it had to use its “feet” to attack prey.“It was more of akick boxerthat asprinter“, clarified Stephan Brusatte, from Columbia University, co-author of the discovery published today in the journalPNAS.
According to scientists, probablyDragonIt was one of the largest predators in its ecosystem, which at that time was surrounded by water, forming arelatively isolated island. “Although carnivorous animals of this type were to be expected, the discovery of one as unusual as Balaur has been exciting,” adds his partner Mark Norell, of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Fossils of small duck-billed dinosaurs and herbivorous dinosaurs the size of a cow have been discovered in the same region.
