An enormous, flesh-eating dinosaur has been discovered in a remote region of Inner Mongolia – well its remains anyway. The feathered dinosaur, called a Gigantoraptor stood on two legs at twice the height of a man, was eight metres (26ft) long, and had a head like a parrot's and scythe-like claws on the end of wings far too small to lift its 1.4-tonne weight off the ground.
The finding has astounded experts because carnivorous dinosaurs were thought to have become smaller as they grew more bird-like. Gigantoraptor erlianensis, which emerged towards the end of the era of dinosaurs, was far heavier than any other feathered dinosaur known.
Dr Xing Xu at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing reconstructed a partial skeleton from fragments of the beak, backbone, limbs, pelvis and shoulder blade. Announcing the discovery in the journal Nature today, the scientists write: "Gigantoraptor is remarkable in its gigantic size." Analysis of the bones placed it in the family of dinosaurs known as the Oviraptorosuarids, a group of feathered dinosaurs rarely weighing more than 40kg (88lb).
