"That doesn't look very scary. More like a six-foot goose."
H. escuilliei, called Halszka for short, was part of the dromaeosauridae, a group of feathered theropods that included velociraptor and that were not birds or bird ancestors, but closely related to them. While no feathers survived on this specimen, Halszka probably sported plumage and it had a somewhat bird-like bill that was still not a true beak (in part because it housed several teeth).
Halszka had a long, swan-like neck, was the size of a goose, and it probably spent much of its time in lakes and rivers eating small fish, crustaceans and small animals such as lizards, Cau said. In this dino-eat-dino world, its predators may have included fellow theropods like velociraptor.
This dinosaur did have a curved sickle-like claw on the second toe of the foot that is typical of dinosaurs like velociraptor, but it was not especially long and probably wasn’t used that much for hunting, Holtz said. Meanwhile, its “arms” were small and appeared to have been modified for use as flippers, which could have helped it paddle through the water. Unlike penguins and other aquatic birds today, Halszka would not have been a diver, Holtz said. Instead, it probably would have used its long neck to dart out and grab prey close to the water’s surface.
The overall result was a sort of “pseudo-goose … something that could wade out into the water and dab around for some small-bodied prey,” Holtz said.
Pseudogooseasaurus !
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-duck-like-dinosaur-20171206-htmlstory.html
Sister blog of Physicists of the Caribbean in which I babble about non-astronomy stuff, because everyone needs a hobby
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I guess you have never been assaulted by a mob of angry geese, a 6 foot version would make me move back to the treetops again ;-)
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