Swan headed dinosaur identified (Halszkaraptor escuilliei)

Paleontologists studying an unusual fossil have identified a new dinosaur, related to the velociraptor, that had a neck like a swan, a snout like a goose and forelimbs like flippers. The creature’s hodgepodge of features — so strange that extra work was needed to verify the fossil’s authenticity — suggest that it might have lived on both land and in water, they reported in a paper published Wednesday in Nature.

The clues that suggest H. escuilliei was semiaquatic include its long neck and hooked, crocodile-like teeth, which it may have used to plunge face first at fish from the water surface. The dinosaur also had a snout filled with sensory nerves that are typically seen in crocodiles and used to detect movement and temperature changes in water. Its forelimbs were shaped less like wings and more like flippers, similar to those used by marine reptiles like the plesiosaur to swim.

“It was designed for swimming,” said Pascal Godefroit, a paleontologist at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels and an author on the paper, “but which kind of swimming we don’t know.”

The newly identified dinosaur’s past is as shrouded in mystery as its swimming abilities. The research team knows only that it is about 75 million years old and came from Mongolia, but not when it was found. That’s because after it was unearthed it was sold on the black market. For years, perhaps decades, it was held in private collections in Japan and Britain before ending up in the hands of researchers.

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