Updated 09:16 PM EDT, Thu, Mar 28, 2024

Weird, Goofy, Dinosaur Without Teeth Has 8ft.-Long Arms, Looks Like an Ostrich

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One of the weirdest-looking dinosaurs may have been discovered and scientists say it looks like a cross between Barney and Jar Jar Binks of "Star Wars."

According to BBC News, the dinosaur is called Deinocheirus mirificus which means "unusual, horrible hands." True to its name, the goofy-looking dinosaur indeed has noteworthy arms.

Two of its arms were discovered nearly 50 years ago, an AP report noted. At that time, scientists thought the "two large, powerful dinosaur arms in Mongolia" belonged to "a fearsome critter with killer claws." But, no.

Instead, scientists feasted their eyes on a bizarre-looking Deinocheirus mirificus which is believed to have stood 16 feet long, said the AP report. The one-of-a-kind dinosaur is" 36 feet long, weighing seven tons, with a duckbill on its head and a hump-like sail on its back," the report added.

If a duckbill and a hump is not enough to make the dinosaur weird-looking, it also has feathers and has no teeth, noted the same AP report.

Yuong-Nam Lee, lead researcher of the study on Deinocheirus mirificus said in the BBC report: "It turned out to be one of the weirdest dinosaurs, it's weird beyond our imagination."

The study, published on the journal Nature, also found out that the dinosaur is "an ancestral relative of the modern ostrich and belongs to the dinosaur family often called ostrich dinosaurs," said the AP report.

The goofy dinosaur's almost 8-feet-long arms also hinted on its diet, as do the contents of its stomach.

"We did not know their function before, but the long forearms with giant claws may have been used for digging and gathering herbaceous plants in freshwater habitats," Lee was quoted as saying in the BBC report.

Just like an ostrich, the dinosaur had "a beak that could eat plants, but it also had a massive tongue that created suction for vacuuming up food from the bottoms of streams, lakes and ponds," according to the AP report, quoting Lee.

Deinocheirus mirificus' also giant feet with hooves which "prevented it from sinking into the boggy wetlands" where it is thought to have lived. Though functional, its large feet make for an even weirder look for the dinosaur.

"People were really wondering what the rest of this animal looked like," said Prof John Hutchinson, a palaeontologist from the UK's Royal Veterinary College, as quoted by BBC News.

"Now we know, and it's just so freaking weird - we never would have expected this animal to look so bizarre," he added. 

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