In Depth
Much of Segnosaurus is still unknown and as such reconstructions of Segnosaurus are usually based with the addition of Erlikosaurus material to fill in the missing parts. Although very similar to one another, Segnosaurus has a key difference in the mouth in that the outer surface of the lower jaw begins at the fourteenth tooth back rather than the fifth like in Erlikosaurus. This means that in the living animal the cheeks of Segnosaurus would not have covered so much of the mouth as the cheeks of Erlikosaurus.
The exact diet of Segnosaurus is hard to establish with certainty, but the fact that the therizinosaurids as a group had recently evolved from meat eating ancestors to a herbivorous diet may offer some clues. Also the mandibular teeth are more peg like, an adaptation seen in some sauropods for stripping fronds of vegetation from the tree canopy.
Further Reading
– Segnosauridae – novoe semeistvo teropod is posdnego mela Mongolii (Segnosauridae – a new family of theropods from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia). – Trudy – Sovmestnaya . – Sovetsko-Mongol’skaya Paleontologicheskaya Ekspeditsiya 8:45-55. – A. Perle – 1979. – Specializations of the mandibular anatomy and dentition of Segnosaurus galbinensis (Theropoda: Therizinosauria). – PeerJ. 4. – L. E. Zanno, K. Tsogtbaatar, T. Chinzorig & T. A. Gates – 2016.
