7. Therizinosaurus
Therizinosaurus is something of a cult favorite; for a long time, only hardcore paleo people knew it existed. Because we only had fragments of its skeleton, it w***as hard to figure out what animal they belonged to. For ages, the claws we had were thought to belong to a turtle, thus the full name: Therizinosaurus cheloniformis.
Now we know Therizinosaurus was a browsing herbivore that walked on two legs and sported a long neck like a sauropod. Like Microraptor, it was probably feathered. Therizinosaurus was an herbivore related to things like T-Rex and Velociraptor, just to ice the cake of weird.
By far, however, the weirdest thing about the Therizinosaurus is its hands. The claws of Therizinosaurus were among the first parts discovered. As more information came out, Therizinosaurus earned its name of “scythe lizard” – a reference to its massive claws, which can get up to 2 feet in length! That’s the longest claw of any animal to date. If you could design a dinosaur, how much cooler would a giant carnivore be with half-meter claws?
(By the way, Googling “Therizinosaurus” will lead to many pages about a “tickle chicken” in a dinosaur-taming game called ARK: Survival Evolved. If you like dinosaurs and video games, it might be worth a look.)