Recently, a Cretaceous-era dinosaur was uncovered by paleontologists in Argentina. They found small arms just as those discovered T. rex. As these two handsome species weren't cousins or even related, scientists guess that the arms may have evolved independently.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex's hands were disproportionately small, but do not dismiss them. They worked as powerful meat hooks.
Another dinosaur with similar-looking hands was bigger and more fearsome. Meet the Gualicho shinyae, "a 1,000-pound, bipedal theropod". It had two short arms with two-fingered claws on either arm.
Shinyae is a name that it shares with its discoverer, Akiko Shinya, even as Gualicho is a name from "Gualichu, a spirit revered by Patagonia's Tehuelche people."
"Gualicho is kind of a mosaic dinosaur, it has features that you normally see in different kinds of theropods," noted study co-author Peter Makovicky, who works out of the Field Museum in Chicago. "It's really unusual-it's different from the other carnivorous dinosaurs found in the same rock formation, and it doesn't fit neatly into any category."
Gualicho, also categorised as an allosauridae, is part of medium-to-large carnivorous theropods, and was different from other kinds of dinosaurs. This is a huge creature that is thought to have similar-looking hands, but underwent separate, or "parallel evolution". Such small arms seem to be common among bipedal carnivores in the Late Cretaceous era.
