IMAGINE an ostrich that tipped the scales at 1400 kilograms, standing twice as tall as a human, with a solid tail and massive body, plus long, feathered arms with sharp claws, and a turtle-like beak. That’s how a newly discovered dinosaur called Gigantoraptor looked as it roamed what is now China about 80 million years ago.
The huge size of Gigantoraptor is a surprise because it is a member of the oviraptorids, a group of flightless feathered dinosaurs closely related to birds, which mostly weighed less than 40 kilograms. Known since the 1920s, oviraptorids were toothless and probably omnivorous. “Gigantoraptor…
