Scientists find gigantic footprints of a new type of dinosaur in China

Summary
An unknown dinosaur was found in China, Fujianipus, which was one of the largest raptors ever, measuring around five meters.

Five gigantic footprints of a type of dinosaur hitherto unknown were found in southeastern China. Scott Persons of the College of Charleston in South Carolina and his colleagues named him Fujianipus. Scientists claim that it lived in East Asia approximately 96 million years ago.

Based on the footprints, it is possible to assume that this was one of the largest raptors – also known as deinonychosaurs – that existed. It is estimated that it measured five meters from snout to tail and probably attacked its prey with huge sharp claws, one on each foot.

Mostly, the raptors were small. For example, it is estimated that Velociraptor was the same size as a turkey. However, some of them, such as Utahraptor and Dakotaraptor, ended up reaching a size of approximately 5 or 6 meters.

Why did dinosaurs become extinct?

Persons and his team have not yet found the dinosaur’s skeleton, so there is not much knowledge about it for now. Instead, they discovered some of his 36-centimeter-long footprints.

“Preservation conditions were suitable for footprints, but not so good for bones,” he says.

The researcher believes that the footprints are those of a raptor, as each of them has the impression of just two fingers. This information corresponds with the anatomy of the raptor’s foot. Although these dinosaurs had three toes, they kept one raised to preserve the large claw at their tips from wear and tear.

Persons points out that Fujianipus shows the growth potential of raptors, which helped when competing with the largest predatory dinosaurs on the scene at that time, such as allosauroids, which could reach 10 meters or more in length.

But over time, raptors didn’t grow much beyond Fujianipus. Persons speculates that this may be due to the emergence of a third group of predatory dinosaurs, the tyrannosauroids. He explains that competing with tyrannosauroids was especially challenging, as many of them were also fast.

Source: Byte Editorial