Halszkaraptor

What it was like

Halszkaraptor was a small, strange feathered dinosaur, about the size of a duck. It had a long, bendy neck, a flat snout with many small teeth, and front limbs that some scientists think may have worked like flippers.

It was first described as a dinosaur that swam and hunted in water, something like a merganser. Other scientists think it lived mainly on land. The debate is still open.

Its world

It lived about 84 to 72 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous, in what is now Mongolia. Its fossil comes from the Djadokhta Formation, a dry land shared with Velociraptor, Protoceratops, Citipati and Oviraptor.

How it was found

Cau and colleagues named Halszkaraptor in 2017. It is known from a single skeleton that was smuggled out of Mongolia and later returned.