Nothronychus

Nothronychus are related to some dinosaurs with ferocious reputations, like the carnivorous tyrannosaurs and allosaurs. But these weren't meat-eaters at all, they had evolved to eat plants. These enigmatic and bizarre-looking theropod dinosaurs had a pot-belly, long arms and agile hands with impressive 30cm long claws. They could have been used to pull down branches to reach the leaves or strip bark from trees.

The wicked looking claws may also have defended Nothronychus from predators or fend off rivals. Nothronychus was the first member of the therizinosaur family to be found in the Americas. Most of the others, such as Therizinosaurus, have been found in China and Mongolia.

Scientific name: Nothronychus

Rank: Genus

Common names:

slothful claw

Behaviours

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Additional data source: Animal Diversity Web

When they lived

Discover the other animals and plants that lived during the following geological time periods.

Cretaceous period
The Cretaceous ended with the most famous mass extinction in history - the one that killed the dinosaurs. Prior to that, it was a warm period with no ice caps at the poles.

What killed them

Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction
The Cretaceous-Tertiary mass extinction - also known as the K/T extinction - is famed for the death of the dinosaurs. However, many other organisms perished at the end of the Cretaceous including the ammonites, many flowering plants and the last of the pterosaurs.

About

Nephrozoa

Nothronychus is a genus of theropod dinosaur classified in the group Therizinosauria, from the Cretaceous of North America.

The type species of this dinosaur, Nothronychus mckinleyi, was described by James Kirkland and Douglas G. Wolfe in 2001. It was recovered near New Mexico's border with Arizona, in an area known as the Zuni Basin, from rocks assigned to the Moreno Hill Formation, dating to the late Cretaceous period (mid-Turonian stage), around 91 million years ago. A second specimen, described in 2009 as a second species, Nothronychus graffami, was found in the Tropic Shale Formation of Utah, dating to the early Turonian, between one million and a half million years older than N. mckinleyi.

The name Nothronychus, is derived from Greek, meaning "slothful claw."

Nothronychus was a herbivorous theropod with a beak, a bird-like hip (resembling that of the non-related ornithischians) and four-toed feet, with all four toes facing forward.

Classification

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Elsewhere on the web

Quick facts on Dinobase (dinobase.gly.bris.ac.uk)
Nothronychus on DinoData (dinodata.org)
Nothronychus quick facts (nhm.ac.uk)
Skeletal drawing of a Nothronychus (skeletaldrawing.com)
Nothronychus (wikipedia.org)

Prehistoric life

Nothronychus

Common names:

Behaviours

Herbivorous

Egg layer

Adapted to running