Limusaurus - A wonderful Bird like Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are vanished terrestrial reptiles from millions of years long ago, which were known to be lived in the era of Mesozoic. In the Mesozoic Era some dinosaurs were the regarded as the biggest land animals ever to exist. The dinosaurs were known to live around 230 million years ago. There are several different species of dinosaurs that existed in the past and one such dinosaur is the limusaurus.

Research specialists from the Chinese Academy of Science institute of Vertebrate Palaenontology and palaeoanthropology situated in Beijing and the George Washington University discovered a unique plant-eating dinosaur located in China, which is called limusaurus. For doing this research on different types of dinosaurs these institutes were funded by the Earth Science Division of the National Science Foundation, the National Geographic Society, the Hilmar Sallee bequest and the Jurassic Foundation. At the end of the research they published reports to the public to view.

The Limusaurus had bird like beak. The research showed the evolution of three-fingered hand birds from Limusaurus. It also showed that theropod dinosaurs were more diverse ecologically during the Jurassic period than it was previously thought.

The researchers say that this limusaurus dinosaur gives clear evidence about how the hand of birds evolved. Limusaurus inextricabilis was discovered from the 159 million year old deposits situated in the Junggat basin area of Xinjiang, China. The dinosaur got this name from the method its skeletons were preserved. The fossils of these dinosaurs were kept as heap on the top of each other and they were kept in the fossilized pits. Researchers say that the examination of the bones of these limusaurus revealed that it did was toothless on the lower and upper jaws and it possessed a developed beak like a bird. With the help of the fossils of limusaurus, they found that it was very probable that it must have been a herbivore due to it being toothless in both in the upper and lower jaws. It also had short hands without sharp claws. Apart from the fossils of limusaurus, they also discovered the skeletons of other dinosaurs such as the tyrannosaur, horned dinosaur, stegosaur and Junggarsuchus sloani, which is a crocodile like dinosaur from the region of China. The researchers tell that initially the limusaurus would have five fingers, of which two fingers were present in the outer side and three on the inner side of the leg of limusaurus, but with the evolution they might have lost two of their outer fingers and the other three inner fingers remained. But, when this research of fingers was conducted in birds, they found that the birds might have lost one finger from outer side of the leg and one from inner side of the leg. Unlike other dinosaurs the hand of limusaurus’ increased the size of the second finger and reduced the size of first finger.

The Limusaurus was the first and primary member of the ceratosaur family from East Asia. Ceratosaurs are nothing but a variety of dinosaur, which often bear horns or crests on their heads and many have knobby and unusual fingers without sharp claws.