Chinese Paleontologists Create Full Rendering of Dinosaur Walking on Two Feet

An artist’s rendering of Auroraceratops. (Robert Walters)
An artist’s rendering of Auroraceratops. (Robert Walters)
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Chinese Paleontologists Create Full Rendering of Dinosaur Walking on Two Feet

An artist’s rendering of Auroraceratops. (Robert Walters)
An artist’s rendering of Auroraceratops. (Robert Walters)

Paleontologists have created a full rendering of a dinosaur walking on two feet.

The involved paleontologists managed to complete their rendering based on a series of articles appearing as Memoir in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on July 8.

The Auroraceratops was one of many dinosaur species known from scant remains. It was named in 2005 based upon a single skull from the Gobi Desert in northwestern China.

But, in the intervening years, scientists have recovered fossils from more than 80 individual Auroraceratops, bringing this small-bodied plant-eater into one of the few very early horned dinosaurs known from complete skeletons.

In the new Memoir, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Gansu Agricultural University, described the anatomy and evolution of Auroraceratops.

Their analysis places Auroraceratops, which lived roughly 115 million years ago, as an early member of the group Ceratopsia, or horned dinosaurs, the same group to which Triceratops belongs.

In contrast to Triceratops, Auroraceratops is small, approximately 49 inches (1.25 meters) in length and 17 inches (44 cm) tall, weighing on average 34 pounds (15.5 kilograms).

While Auroraceratops has a short frill and beak that characterize it as a horned dinosaur, it lacks the "true" horns and extensive cranial ornamentation of Triceratops.

The paleontologists also provided a more detailed description, saying the Auroraceratops preserves multiple features of the skeleton, like a curved femur and long, thin claws that are unambiguously associated with walking bipedally.

Eric Morschhauser, head of the faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, said: "This rendering can now provide us with a better picture of the starting point for the changes between bipedal and quadrupedal dinosaurs."

"Before this rendering, we had to rely on Psittacosaurus for our picture of what the last bipedal dinosaur looked like,” he added.



Hurricane Iona, Tropical Storm Keli Rumble in the Central Pacific off Hawaii

This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows Hurricane Iona forming in the central Pacific Ocean, Monday, July 28, 2025. (NOAA via AP)
This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows Hurricane Iona forming in the central Pacific Ocean, Monday, July 28, 2025. (NOAA via AP)
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Hurricane Iona, Tropical Storm Keli Rumble in the Central Pacific off Hawaii

This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows Hurricane Iona forming in the central Pacific Ocean, Monday, July 28, 2025. (NOAA via AP)
This satellite image provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows Hurricane Iona forming in the central Pacific Ocean, Monday, July 28, 2025. (NOAA via AP)

A major hurricane was churning across the Pacific Ocean but was several hundred miles south-southeast of Hawaii and posed no threat to the islands, forecasters said Tuesday.

Hurricane Iona is one of two major weather systems in the central Pacific Ocean.

In its latest advisory, the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center said Iona was about 765 miles (1,230 kilometers) away from Honolulu, with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph (205 kph), The AP news reported.

Additional strengthening was forecast later on Tuesday, with steady weakening expected to begin by Wednesday.

Hurricane Iona is the first named storm of the hurricane season in the central Pacific and emerged Sunday from a tropical depression. It continues to trek west over warm, open waters.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Keli has maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph), the NHC said Tuesday morning. It was about 890 miles (1,435 kilometers) southeast of Honolulu and was moving west at about 13 mph (20 kph).

No coastal watches or warnings were in effect for the storms.

The administrator of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency on Monday hosted a statewide conference call with all counties, during which the National Weather Service provided an assessment and status of the storms.

“All counties are monitoring,” agency spokesperson Kiele Amundson said in an email.

Another indirect impact from the weather systems could be swells, but they are relatively small and moving westward and won’t create anything significant, said Derek Wroe with the weather service in Honolulu.

However, a large swell is headed toward Hawaii after being generated several hundred miles east of New Zealand.

It’s expected to arrive in Hawaii by Thursday, about the same time the storms pass the state.

“People might wrongly attribute the swell energy to be from these tropical systems, but they’re actually not,” he said.