New dinosaur unearthed in Inner Mongolia
14 June 2007
The remains of a giant, birdlike dinosaur called Giantoraptor elrianensis, was found in Inner Mongolia at Erlian Basin yesterday, AP reported. The fossilized bones weighed 3,000 pounds (1,360 kilograms), and the dinosaur itself would have been about 26 feet long and 16 feet tall, according to Xu Xing, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology in Beijing. The discovery is a surprise to paleontologists because the dinosaur's height was comparable to a tyrannosaurus and had a beak, slender legs and probably feathers. The remains challenge the theory that dinosaurs become smaller in size as they evolved into birds, and that larger dinosaurs that evolved over time had less birdlike characteristics.