Apparently This Is What a Swimming Dinosaur Looks Like
Its features are so strange that scientists originally thought it might be a fake.
At first, the fossil was smuggled out of Mongolia, as many dinosaurs are. It found its way to Japan, then Britain, then France. In 2015, the private collector who finally bought it contacted the paleontologist Pascal Godefroit to get his opinion on the specimen.
Godefroit’s opinion was: This is one weird dinosaur.
The creature was clearly a small predator, much like . Its feet even had the distinctive sickle-shaped claws that clinked across the kitchen floor in . But its long neck and tapering snout resembled those of a swan. Its arms and hands also had unusual proportions—something halfway between the grasping limbs of otherthat had adapted for life in the water—that is, if it was even an actual dinosaur.
