Bizarre Dinosaur Featured in the Latest Jurassic Movie Has Scythe-like Claws Useless for Fighting, Study Reveals

A research team from the University of Bristol and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing discovered that certain predatory dinosaurs used their claws for digging or even exhibition. An example of this is the bizarre dinosaur with scythe-like claws featured in the latest Jurassic World movie.

Scythe-Clawed Dinosaur Inaccurately Depicted in Movie

The research, titled "Functional space analyses reveal the function and evolution of the most bizarre theropod manual unguals" published in Communications Biology, focused on two types of theropod dinosaurs, the alvarezsaurs, and therizinosaurs.

Both dinosaurs featured strange claws whose purpose was unknown until now. The alvarezsaurs' rock-pick-like claws were employed for digging, while their near cousins, the huge therizinosaurs, utilized their overdeveloped, meter-long, scythe-like claws for show.

In the movie Jurassic World: Dominion, therizinosaurs can be seen batting away a deer and impaling the ferocious Giganotosaurus. But the new study shows that this depiction is inaccurate.

Zichuan Qin, the lead author of the study and a doctoral student at the University of Bristol, told Live Science that movies and documentaries suggested that these theropod dinosaurs used their claws like long swords for fighting others or as self-defense against predators.

But the findings suggest that these claws are too fragile to bear any stress, which means their claws could not be used for fighting or defending. The results surprised the team given how the therizinosaurs were depicted in the latest Jurassic World movie.

Dinosaur Claws Only for Display and Digging

Therizinosaurs were only the size of a turkey at first before they evolved into a 30-feet (10-meter) dinosaur and became an "utterly bizarre" dinosaur at the need of the Cretaceous. But what makes it notable was its narrow 3-foot-long (1-meter) scythe-like claws, which the study said are the biggest of any animal ever recorded.

Paul Barrett, a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London but not part of the study, told Live Science that there have been a lot of arguments about these claws given that it is attached to a dinosaur whose features suggest they were herbivores. Instead, the study reveals that these scythe-like claws were so weak that they could not even hook and pull down branches.

Moreover, the press release via EurekAlert! said that researchers also studied the alvarezsaurs, which is a group of dinosaurs closely related to therizinosaurs that evolved to become a mini dinosaurs with rock-pick-like claws. These dinosaurs were smaller than a chicken and because of that researchers previously believed that they use their strong and robust claws for digging in the ground.

However, Zichuan explained that their findings revealed that early alvarezsaurs had multifunctional hands but they were not good at digging. On the other hand, their smaller descendants had efficient digging claws they use to feed on Late Cretaceous termites.

Professor Emily Rayfield, one of Zichuan's supervisors, said that science and technology may not be able to bring back extinct species but advanced computing and engineering techniques help scientists visualize what these bizarre animals were like hundreds of millions of years ago.