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Therizinosaurus (pronounced THER-uh-ZEEN-oh-SAWR-us) (meaning "scythe lizard") was a huge, unusual theropod dinosaur known only from fossilized arms with three enormous, sickle-like claws found in the southern Gobi Desert in 1948. When it was found, it was thought to be a giant turtle, not a dinosaur. Its classification is uncertain. The huge arms were 8 feet (2.45 m) long and the claws were 2 feet (60 cm) long. Some paleontologists have speculated that these claws may have been used to rip open giant termite nests, making Therizinosaurus an insectivore (an insect-eater), but most think that it was an herbivore. Therizinosaurus lived during the late Cretaceous period (roughly 77-69 million years ago). Therizinosaurus was named by the Russian paleontologist E. A. Maleev in 1954.