Deinocheirus

dinosaur · mystery · Mongolia

The Terrible Hand. Deinocheirus got its name from Greek words meaning "horrible hand" because the first discovery in 1965 was just a pair of enormous arms and shoulder bones. Scientists were totally puzzled about what kind of dinosaur had such strange, huge hands.

A 50 Year Mystery. For almost fifty years, paleontologists only had those arm bones and couldn't figure out what the rest of the dinosaur looked like. It became one of the biggest mysteries in dinosaur science, and people could only guess what this strange creature really was.

Found in Mongolia. The first bones were discovered in 1965 in the Nemegt Formation of Mongolia, a place famous for amazing dinosaur fossils. These rocks are about 70 million years old from the Late Cretaceous period.

The Big Reveal. In 2014, two more complete skeletons of Deinocheirus were finally found and described, solving the mystery at last. Scientists finally knew what the rest of its body looked like and how it lived.

Bones Come Home. Some bones from the new skeletons had been taken out of Mongolia illegally, but they were returned to the country in 2014 so they could be studied where they were found.