Single-Fingered Dinosaur Discovered

Meat-eating dinosaurs were very good at finding food, thus their evolutionary success over some 165 million years. But during their time on earth, they kept losing something that might seem important: their fingers. The earliest carnivorous dinosaurs had five fingers, although only four were actually functional. Many later meat-eaters had only three, and evolution left the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex with only two. Now researchers have unearthed the first known dinosaur with only one finger.[...]

The team suggests that the single, clawlike digit was an adaptation for digging, perhaps for insects such as termites.