Megaraptor had giant claws and an appetite for crocodilians

In 2019, a team of researchers uncovered a 70-million-year-old dinosaur in a Patagonian province of Argentina. The dinosaur, a hunter, was a 23-foot-tall predator whose long, powerful arms were tipped with massive claws. And it came with an unexpected bonus.

As the team led by Lucio Ibiricu, a paleontologist at the Patagonian Institute of Geology and Paleontology, worked on the remains, they realized that a bone tucked between the jaws was not from the skeleton: it was, instead, the upper arm bone of a crocodile relative. The dinosaur’s teeth were actually touching the crocodile bone.

It was such a bizarre discovery that team members joked that the dinosaur had “choked on a croc leg,” said Matt Lamanna, a paleontologist at the Carnegie Museum. “We don’t believe that, but we also don’t th