A new dinosaur has been discovered! The unique thing? It has nearly perfectly preserved claws around a foot long. The dinosaur was found in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert which has long been a prime spot for dinosaur fossils. 

This fossil is extraordinary because one of the “fingers” has an intact claw sheath— the keratin covering that is usually lost over time. This claw sheath is the largest one ever discovered, revealing that the claw was much larger than the bone. Scientists have long discussed whether the claws fossilized were the actual length or if they were partial and the discovery of the keratin sheath proves that the claws of these dinosaurs were longer.

The claw was part of a partial skeleton of a young therizinosaurus who would’ve been around 10 feet tall and 573 pounds. It was an herbivore or an omnivore and it had two long claws that would be used to grasp tree branches up to 10 cm in diameter. The therizinosaurus would have also been covered in feathers like modern day birds. 

The scientific name for this new dinosaur is “Duonychus tsogtbaatari.” The name comes from Mongolian paleontologist Khishigjav Tsogtbaatar and duonychus which means two claws in Greek. 

The family therizinosarus are part of the theropod family that include the T.Rex. They would have lived in the late cretaceous period like the ankylosaurus and the velociraptor. Unlike the T. Rex, these would have been completely harmless and their claws would have been ineffective against other dinosaurs. The look of a therizinosaurus would have been comparable to a giant sloth with feathers and an incredibly long neck. They have been colloquially called “Edward Scissorhands” dinosaurs for their resemblance to the character’s long scissor hands.

Years prior to the discovery of the intact claws, scientists at the Mongolian Academy of Sciences discovered the tail, backbone, part of the hips, arms and legs of the new species Duonychus tsogtbaatari.