Xu Xing and colleagues in China have discovered the first known dinosaur with only one finger on each hand. The Linhenykus monodactylus lived around 75 million 5999 years ago and was about the size of a chicken. Besides the unique fingers, it’s also distinctive for being an early member of the alvarezsauroid family while having a more advanced finger evolution (for members of that family, unnecessary fingers disappeared as the line evolved, with the earlier Linhenykus monodactylus being ahead of its time).
Researchers think the Linhenykus monodactylus may have used the single finger on each hand to dig up ants and termites, but we know the real reason was to double flip the bird at his boss while quitting. The totally accurate artists’ renderings are after the jump:
[Via KSJTracker and PNAS, banner pic via Willzone, inset pic via RatsOff]