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World’s first swimming dinosaur discovered in Mongolia

Edmond Dantès

Edmond Dantès

It belongs in a museum!
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Aug 24, 2022
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Natovenator likely swam to catch small prey.

For more than 150 million years, amazing dinosaur species in every shape and size filled Earth's habitats. Long-necked giants, living tanks, razor-toothed carnivores and brightly colored birds proliferated through the Mesozoic world. But for all their diversity and success, it seemed dinosaurs were reluctant to take the plunge. Through two centuries of discovery, no non-avian dinosaur was ever found with adaptations best suited to swimming and diving, even as other forms of reptiles made the transition from land to water. But now, at long last, paleontologists have found a swimming dinosaur.

The newly named species, described Thursday in Communications Biology, was not a saurian giant. The small swimmer was only about a foot long and lived in prehistoric Mongolia about 71 million years ago. Despite being a cousin of sharp-toothed predators such as Velociraptor, the new dinosaur had a very different, streamlined look and long jaws fully of tiny teeth. Seoul National University paleontologist Sungjin Lee and colleagues have named the dinosaur Natovenator polydontus, the "many-toothed swimming hunter."

The new dinosaur was found in the Gobi Desert at a place called Hermiin Tsav, famous among paleontologists for preserving multiple dinosaur species and other forms of ancient life. Careful preparation of the dinosaur's bones was required before the strange nature of this new species became apparent. After the bones were exposed, Lee says, "we realized that this was something special, because it was beautifully preserved with a nice skull and an extremely long neck." As the experts looked closer, the fossil seemed to share some traits with another species, Halszkaraptor, that was named in 2017 and initially interpreted as a swimming dinosaur. The hypothesis generated a great deal of debate, however, and so Lee and co-authors scrutinized the bones of Natovenator carefully. In the end, the researchers determined, Natovenator was a swimmer. "We think it looked like a Cretaceous cormorant," Lee notes.
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Naturally, paleontologists are many millions of years too late to watch Natovenator in life and observe what a dinosaur stroke might look like. Paleontologists will have to dig in further to ascertain how the dinosaur's anatomy translates to the animal's behavior. "In spite of evidence that is not entirely conclusive, I think that some anatomical details of Natovenator are good indicators that the animal was probably aquatic," says Argentine Natural Science Museum paleontologist Federico Agnolin, who was not involved in the new study.

The long jaws and many tiny teeth of Natovenator could be an adaptation to snatching small, slippery or wriggling prey from the water. More than that, Lee and co-authors note, the preserved ribs of Natovenator are oriented in a swept-back fashion similar to that of penguins and auks. The arrangement appears to be a form of skeletal streamlining that would have allowed Natovenator to swim more efficiently in Cretaceous lakes and streams. Such streamlining has not yet been seen in any other dinosaur species.

Of course, there is existing evidence that some dinosaurs swam now and then. Deep scratches in muddy sediment made by other dinosaurs have been found at various places around the world from time periods millions of years apart. Most of the time these tracks were made by theropod dinosaurs as they crossed rivers or waded out into the shallows in search of a fish dinner. The great sail-baked dinosaur Spinosaurus, too, has been interpreted as being more aquatic than most other species. Debate remains about whether Spinosaurus was a skilled swimmer or even hunted prey while wholly submerged, but the dense bones of the dinosaur and its croc-like jaws hint that the immense predator was at least wading around in the shallows in search of a lungfish or coelacanth to eat. But Natovenator is distinct from these earlier examples, because it appears to have specific adaptations related to moving through the water.
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www.smithsonianmag.com

World’s First Swimming Dinosaur Discovered in Mongolia

Natovenator was a streamlined hunter with jaws full of tiny teeth
www.smithsonianmag.com www.smithsonianmag.com

Holotype:

MPC-D 102/114 (Institute of Paleontology, Mongolian Academy of Sciences, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) is a mostly articulated skeleton with a nearly complete skull.

Locality and horizon:

Baruungoyot Formation (Upper Cretaceous), Hermiin Tsav, Omnogovi Province, Mongolia.

Etymology:

Natovenator, from the Latin nato (swim) and venator (hunter), in reference to the hypothesized swimming behaviour and piscivorous diet of the new taxon; polydontus, from the Greek polys (many) and odous (tooth) in reference to the unusually many teeth.

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(a Dorsal series of Natovenator in ventral view. b Reconstruction of dorsal vertebrae and ribs of Natovenator in left lateral view. c Skeletal reconstruction of Natovenator with missing parts in dark grey. d–i Dorsal rib morphology of Natovenator (d), diving birds (e–i), common ostrich (j), and Shri devi, a likely terrestrial dromaeosaurid from the Baruungoyot Formation (k) in ventral view (not to scale). l Reconstruction of the fourth dorsal vertebra with corresponding ribs in anterior view. d2 second dorsal vertebra, r2 second dorsal rib, r3 third dorsal rib, r4 fourth dorsal rib.)


www.nature.com

A non-avian dinosaur with a streamlined body exhibits potential adaptations for swimming - Communications Biology

Presenting Natovenator polydontus, a non-avian dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Mongolia displaying morphology indicative of swimming behaviour.
www.nature.com www.nature.com
 
mbpm

mbpm

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Oct 25, 2017
23,650
Pretty neat. I'm hoping we dig up the first spacefaring dinosaurs soon.
 
Sesha

Sesha

▲ Legend ▲
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Oct 25, 2017
9,830
So the earliest non-avian dinosaur we know of that could swim? Makes sense that a species that could swim evolved before proper birds evolved, I guess.

Is the illustration merely interpretation, or do they figure out what colors its feathers had as well?
 
Stencil

Stencil

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Oct 30, 2017
10,386
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I love when new dinos are discovered. It's like a new Pokemon being announced, but real life!
 
Bessy67

Bessy67

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Oct 29, 2017
11,639
This whole "dinosaurs had feathers" push is killing my hype for them. Think how cool this could have been if the rendering wasn't just literally a duck.
 
Helix

Helix

Mayor of Clown Town
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Jun 8, 2019
23,806
Finally, we have solved the mystery of who was the ancestors of the modern day ducks
 
Thequietone

Thequietone

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Oct 26, 2017
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I'm going to be honest and I'll probably be dog piled for it but I find the whole people having problems with dinosaurs having feathers to be very toxic masculinity for lack of a better word/term. I feel like it boils down to scary lizards = cool and masculine and feathered birds = unmasculine and uncool. Doesn't matter that these creatures can still kill with extreme ease, the fact it has feathers is too much to even consider to be cool or dangerous. I feel like a lot of you guys complaining could be getting eviscerated by one and be shouting insults at it, if you had no feathers you'd be cooler while killing me! Call that a tear? I've seen scarier teddy bears!
 
Uncivilized Elk

Uncivilized Elk

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Jun 22, 2019
3,660
Thequietone said:
I'm going to be honest and I'll probably be dog piled for it but I find the whole people having problems with dinosaurs having feathers to be very toxic masculinity for lack of a better word/term. I feel like it boils down to scary lizards = cool and masculine and feathered birds = unmasculine and uncool. Doesn't matter that these creatures can still kill with extreme ease, the fact it has feathers is too much to even consider to be cool or dangerous. I feel like a lot of you guys complaining could be getting eviscerated by one and be shouting insults at it, if you had no feathers you'd be cooler while killing me! Call that a tear? I've seen scarier teddy bears!
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OK, Alan Grant.

(I agree with you.)
 
Man God

Man God

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Oct 25, 2017
38,308
Doesn't help that plenty of other cultures throughout time found feathers hella masculine.
 
Tabaxi

Tabaxi

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Nov 18, 2018
12,931
Thequietone said:
I'm going to be honest and I'll probably be dog piled for it but I find the whole people having problems with dinosaurs having feathers to be very toxic masculinity for lack of a better word/term. I feel like it boils down to scary lizards = cool and masculine and feathered birds = unmasculine and uncool. Doesn't matter that these creatures can still kill with extreme ease, the fact it has feathers is too much to even consider to be cool or dangerous. I feel like a lot of you guys complaining could be getting eviscerated by one and be shouting insults at it, if you had no feathers you'd be cooler while killing me! Call that a tear? I've seen scarier teddy bears!
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You're right and you should say it
 
JonnyDBrit

JonnyDBrit

God and Anime
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Oct 25, 2017
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DiipuSurotu said:
How come so many dinosaurs are discovered in Mongolia?
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Culex said:
That area was once one of the most lush and hospitable of any place on earth 65 million years ago and earlier.
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Added to which, the present day Gobi desert does well to preserve whatever has survived under it. The basins and valleys expose a lot of underlying (particularly cretaceous) rock too, so it's comparatively accessible material if you're prepared and able to look for it - which Mongolia has an established reputation for, thus helping drive ongoing interest in the region, leading people to keep finding stuff there
 
Lord Fanny

Lord Fanny

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Apr 25, 2020
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Thequietone said:
I'm going to be honest and I'll probably be dog piled for it but I find the whole people having problems with dinosaurs having feathers to be very toxic masculinity for lack of a better word/term. I feel like it boils down to scary lizards = cool and masculine and feathered birds = unmasculine and uncool. Doesn't matter that these creatures can still kill with extreme ease, the fact it has feathers is too much to even consider to be cool or dangerous. I feel like a lot of you guys complaining could be getting eviscerated by one and be shouting insults at it, if you had no feathers you'd be cooler while killing me! Call that a tear? I've seen scarier teddy bears!
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There could be truth to this, but I think it really just comes down to the fact that people like one design/idea better than another and the featherless one has been a staple of pop culture for years so it's also something more people are used to. I guess there are people who are like 'Wimpy SJWs are putting feathers on our dinosaurs,' but I honestly don't think that's the reasoning for most people who dislike feathered dinos and it's not nearly that deep. It's about as deep as why some people prefer G1 Transfomers to Bayformers.

And also, they couldn't kill anyone with extreme ease, because they're all dead.
 
Magister Xehanort

Magister Xehanort

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Sep 5, 2021
3,039
Thequietone said:
I'm going to be honest and I'll probably be dog piled for it but I find the whole people having problems with dinosaurs having feathers to be very toxic masculinity for lack of a better word/term. I feel like it boils down to scary lizards = cool and masculine and feathered birds = unmasculine and uncool. Doesn't matter that these creatures can still kill with extreme ease, the fact it has feathers is too much to even consider to be cool or dangerous. I feel like a lot of you guys complaining could be getting eviscerated by one and be shouting insults at it, if you had no feathers you'd be cooler while killing me! Call that a tear? I've seen scarier teddy bears!
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I agree.

Feathers are cool.

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