The Giant 'Egg Thief' - Gigantoraptor

the infamous dinosaur egg thieves the Oviraptor Oh sores are an especially intriguing group of animals with a fascinating evolution and some very unique anatomy but there's one member of this group in particular that's remarkably unusual in the way it evolved reaching sizes far above any of its relatives this is the huge gigantoraptor early on ANSYS Oviraptor Azores have had a hard time in paleontology media often being portrayed as vicious robbers of eggs due to their quite unfair name which arose when the first fossils belonging to this group were found on top of what was thought to be the eggs of another dinosaur when in fact this individual had just been looking after his own nest so as a small way to make up for this mistreatment let's take a look at one of the most fantastic examples from the lineage the anatomy of this giant theropod is understandably really quite fascinating with all sorts of morphological quirks painting an image of a truly unique dinosaur clearly the most obvious of these is the immense size of the animal with the original specimen at over 8 meters in length 3 and a half metres tall of the hip and with a mass of more than 1,400 kilograms dimensions like these are very unusual for Oviraptor sores which generally are quite small making the discovery of this species a big surprise to paleontologists at the time but there's much more to gigantoraptor than just his impressive size unlike other smaller members of Oviraptor or Soria this dinosaur actually displays some more birds like characteristics which seems to oppose the evolutionary trend seen in other groups of Solaris or theropods which became less bird-like as they grew to larger sizes another unique trait seen in gigantoraptor is their very strange shape of its humerus which is incredibly bowed to the side additionally other unusual anatomies include a kind of Numa Thais ation of the forwards tail vertebra which is unlike that seen in any other up doors before and while the tail vertebrae further back lack any pneumatic openings they contain a spongy structure inside which likely helped to conserve weight interestingly it was found that the original holotype specimen of gigantoraptor was 11 years old when it died and a had reached its young adult size after just seven years this means that the individual was actually still at a relatively young stage when it died so a fully grown Gigante Raptor could have been even larger than the calculated sizes I mentioned earlier this also indicates that these animals grew at an incredibly rapid rate faster than most other theropod dinosaurs including tyrannosaurs such as albertasaurus the four limbs of gigantoraptor were also relatively very long as were the hind limbs leading to some interesting ideas as to just how this organism lived there has also been some uncertainty to do with the extent of feather cover in the species with the original description of the animal in 2007 discussing the possibility that despite evolving from ancestors known to possess Palacios and other types of feathers gigantoraptor may have lost some of this integument as it evolved to reach larger sizes it was suggested that because this Oviraptor assault got to such a big body mass any filamentous feathering for insulation would not be needed and therefore would be selected against and would eventually disappear leading to a more naked appearance of this dinosaur however the paleontologists describing gigantoraptor also explained how it's entirely possible that arm feathers were retained in this larger taxon since their primary function was not insulation but probably associated with behaviors such as display and the development of such structures is likely not related to the size of an organism however no direct evidence of the extent of feathering and gigantoraptor has been found so all we have for the moment are these inferences some more very interesting inferences have been drawn about the lifestyle of this animal - the unique combination of anatomical traits we've looked at led to quite a bit of discussion into how such a strange creature might have behaved as well as its diet the long neck and small head of the animal have been suggested to be an indication of a herbivorous lifestyle however the long sharp claws and the elongated hind limbs with proportions that are seemingly adapted for running could also support a carnivorous diet involving chasing down prey although one suggestion by paleontologists is that gigantoraptor was actually a herbivore that just used his running adapted legs to escape predators some answers may be found in the jaws of the dinosaur with a 20-17 study that examined the mandible of gigantoraptor revealing many interesting details it was found that this species had the relatively deepest beak of its entire family which is actually an adaptation seen in some modern birds that allows for the processing of harder seeds also it was discovered that the ovary rapturous or family gigantoraptor is a member of were more suited to a shearing action of the beak whereas other Oviraptor Azores were better at crushing food but the mandible of gigantoraptor itself seems to have been capable of basic shearing and crushing actions so what was this creature shearing and crushing plant material flesh or perhaps both this still remains to be confidently determined gigantoraptor not only generated a great deal of mystery to do with his behaviors and life appearance but its discovery also resulted in some interesting additions to our understanding of the evolution of bird line theropods when it was first named in 2007 gigantoraptor was determined to be a basal or primitive member of one of the two main lineages within Oviraptor or Soria the Oviraptor EDS however since then several other studies have found support for the species actually being caused in a basal position within the other main lineage the Cain Agnetha's generally there appeared to be a trend along the Solaris Orion dinosaurs leading to Birds which includes the Oviraptor a source of a reduction in body size though certain non-avian subgroups that diverged off from this main lineage did evolve secondarily large bodied members however when tax are in these groups grew to bigger dimensions the bird-like characteristics usually reversed to more basal conditions but as I mentioned earlier in gigantoraptor many of these traits were kept thus making this giant actually appear more bird-like than the smaller of Europe pterosaurs it was related to so it shows us that the evolution of these organisms as is usual is actually far more complex than we had realized and gigantoraptor is basically a big bird there is still a good deal of mystery surrounding this fascinating species of dinosaur but hopefully we'll be able to learn more about how it lived with future studies and scientific developments gigantoraptor is an absolutely incredible of a raptor assault and I really should have made a video about this grouping much sooner as we surely need better or rewrapped harass or representation anyway I hope you enjoyed learning about this remarkable animal if you would like to find out more about our world its history and the wonderful life that surrounds us all please feel free to subscribe to the channel if you think we deserve it and if you would like to see more from us [Music]

Channel: Ben G Thomas

Views: 233,843

Rating: 4.9560599 out of 5

Keywords: Biology, Science, Paleontology, Palaeontology, Dinosaurs, Animals, Nature, Wildlife, Ben, Thomas, Prehistory, Anatomy, Fossil, Bones, News, 7Daysofscience, Days, of, inner mongolia, oviraptor, caenagnathid, cretaceous, evolution, bird evolution, theropod

Id: H8tXN_3IE1g

Length: 6min 56sec (416 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 08 2019