This dinosaur may have had a body like a duck

The nativist The duck was small and probably used its forelimbs when swimming, says Yuong-Nam Lee, a vertebrate paleontologist at Seoul National University in South Korea. “I think” The nativist He lived, he says, in water and little fish.

This is not the first time that researchers have suspected non-avian dinosaurs to have aquatic life. For years paleontologists have debated whether spinosaurs were aquatic predators (SN: 3/23/22). And in 2017, researchers reported Halszkaraptor -a relative of * The nativist – It had features analogous to those of aquatic birds and reptiles, although physicists could not deduce the shape of the body.

In the new study, Lee and colleagues developed a well-preserved skeleton from Hermiin Tsav fossils in Mongolia, found in rocks from the Upper Cretaceous, which date from about 100 million to 66 million years ago. Skull, teeth, neck and limbs The nativist related to those of * Halszkaraptorthe team reports, suggesting that the two probably had comparable lives.

What more, intent? The nativistthe ribs indicate that it has a very ugly body like a modern frog, with a compressed and flattened rib cage, which researchers say is related to aquatic reptiles.

Very similar between The nativist and the eel or cormorant is almost certainly a known example of convergent evolution, said Thomas Holtz Jr., a vertebrate paleontologist at the University of Maryland in College Park, who was not involved in the study. “Develop similar body designs for similar lifestyles.”

It is left unclear how strong the swimmer is The nativist it may have been Dinosaurs appear to have short forelimbs, and their arms appear to lack limbs, like loons kicking swimmers, says Holtz. But semiaquatic mammals like minks and some other successful modern predators have swimming skeletons that aren’t very suitable for life in water either, he says. “yes” The nativist it might be a medium in swimming ability, between something like credit and an icon.’