SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Dozens of new dinosaurs were described last year, and some are more fantastical than others.
CHINZORIG TSOGTBAATAR: My names is Chinzorig Tsogtbaatar. I'm currently research assistant in North Carolina State University Department of Biological Science.
PFEIFFER: Tsogtbaatar was involved in several of last year's big finds, one of them being Duonychus tsogtbaatari. It's named in honor of Tsogtbaatar's father, a renowned Mongolian paleontologist. This creature is 90 million years old. And its hands are composed of two fingers, each around a foot long. They're claws, really.
TSOGTBAATAR: This specimen was only two functional fingers, and also including each of the claw preserved in a creatine sheet, which is also known as our nail.
PFEIFFER: Those are some serious nails. And in addition to that Edward Scissorhands feature, there are also feathers.
TSOGTBAATAR: It's all hypothesis - that they may use this feather during the mating season like an attraction, attract the other gender.
PFEIFFER: He also said the feathers could have been used as a display when fighting. Another dino with a wild appearance is the 165-million-year-old Spicomellus afer. Here's Susannah Maidment, a dinosaur paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London.
SUSANNAH MAIDMENT: This dinosaur belongs to a group of dinosaurs called the ankylosaurs. They're four-legged dinosaurs, and they're covered from their head to the end of their tail in body armor - in armor that is embedded in the skin.
PFEIFFER: Maidment worked with a team to dig up the specimen in the Atlas Mountains of North Africa, and she said it has spikes more than three feet long. So why all that armor?
MAIDMENT: We generally think that they're something to do with display, and often this is related to trying to attract a mate. So it could be that Spicomellus was showing off to try and get a girlfriend. It could be that it was trying to ward off predators.
PFEIFFER: So sometimes feathers and spikes served the same purpose - to impress potential partners. And this spiky dinosaur has another startling feature.
MAIDMENT: The weirdest thing about it is definitely that it has really small spikes that are actually fused to its ribs.
PFEIFFER: Meaning that some of the shorter spikes, ones that are 4 to 7 inches long, are growing from the inside out. But even though Spicomellus afer looked intimidating, it was an herbivore. Not so for the Shri rapax, another dinosaur found by Chinzorig Tsogtbaatar. This one was a flying dinosaur. It soared down from the skies.
TSOGTBAATAR: The Shri rapax main claw was very strongly curved and also very powerful.
PFEIFFER: It could also use that claw to pick up dinosaur eggs the size of a football or other types of food and prey. Tsogtbaatar said the creature had a good hunting strategy.
TSOGTBAATAR: When they attacking such a large animals - like, 5 to 6 tons - they usually hunt them, like, in a pack, a group.
PFEIFFER: Terror from above. Another dino find is the more docile Zavacephale rinpoche, a member of the pachycephalosaur group. Until last year, the oldest specimen ever found was from 95 million years ago. But this new one is 108 million years old, and that changes our understanding of their evolution. Tsogtbaatar says this dome-headed specimen is a stunner.
TSOGTBAATAR: That is the most complete, I can say, in the world so far.
PFEIFFER: What did these dinosaurs do with their massive domed skulls?
MAIDMENT: We think that they were probably head-butting each other. This is probably something to do with territorial or mating displays or at competitions. And it would have been something a bit like bighorn sheep.
PFEIFFER: In case you think paleontologists are running out of dinosaurs to discover, Susannah Maidment says on average, a new dinosaur is described every week, with way more to come.
MAIDMENT: For 140 million years of the Mesozoic period, pretty much every animal larger than a meter in size that lived on land was a dinosaur, occupying pretty much every ecological niche. We've probably found less than 1% of all the dinosaurs that ever lived, and there's many, many, many more to find.
PFEIFFER: So keep an eye out for a lot more discoveries this year.
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