Dinosaur: Meeting the Therizinosaurus

People might think I’m starting to make up dinosaur names, as a friend of mine said the other day when I said I was going to write a short introduction to Therizinosaurus. Let’s face it, he said, who has ever heard of a Therizinosaurus. We can face that fact as this is an extremely unusual dinosaur and I can believe that it is not particularly well known. I don’t think it appears in many stories or movies, but it deserves attention nonetheless.

Therizinosaurus, or Ther as we will refer to them, lived in the late Cretaceous period around 77 to 69 million years ago. While Ther was carnivorous, so to speak, they basically feed on insects. Keep in mind that the insects tended to be quite a bit larger than we’re used to these days and would have made a good snack for this dinosaur, even though they weighed around 5 tons, and adults reached around 30 feet. long. . The belief is that these creatures burrowed into large ant mounds and gorged themselves.

While Ther was originally described by experts as a giant tortoise, it was soon shown to be nothing of the sort. Unlike many dinosaurs, Ther had very long front claws, measuring up to a quarter of the length of its arm and it was with these giant claws, possibly reaching 2 feet in length, that it was attached to the 8 foot end. long arms that allowed digging in the ground / anthill.

Looking at Ther, one can get a bit confused as they would have looked different than other dinosaurs. Starting with the head, the skull was small and rested on a long neck. This dino had a wide, bulky body and would have walked on two legs. The arms were very long and featured extra-long claws. I’m sure they didn’t crawl on the ground, however you can build a picture in your mind that would have looked a lot like that or Edward’s scissor hands.

There isn’t much more to Ther, as we haven’t seen a complete specimen that I know of. But from this introduction you can understand why this dinosaur was totally unique. The internet and books are a great source of information and you can see various images of what experts believed Ther looked like. Bullyland have delivered a fantastic model and it is really worth a look.