Battle damage linked to the fearsome curving talon of a newly discovered dinosaur relative of Velociraptor is shedding light on how it was used as a weapon.

The newfound 75-million-year-old dinosaur is a feathered raptor called Talos sampsoni — “Talos” in homage to a winged bronze giant in Greek mythology that could run at lightning speed and that succumbed to a wound to his ankle, “sampsoni” in honor of Scott Sampson of the PBS series “Dinosaur Train,” and a research curator at the Utah Museum of Natural History.

Researchers discovered the specimen in the 1.9-million-acre Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in southern Utah. The area is one of the last pristine dinosaur graveyards in the United States, with at least 15 new dinosaur species discovered there in just the past decade, including the turkey-like Hagryphus giganteus, horned dinosaurs Kosmoceratops and Utahceratops, duck-billed dinosaurs, including Gryposaurus monumentensis, two new tyrannosaurs and a number of armored dinosaurs known as ankylosaurs.

After studying the fossil, researcher discovered what appeared to be signs of trauma to its second toe on its left foot, the one that would have bore an enlarged hook-like claw.

Raptor dinosaurs all possessed unusually large,  sickle-like claws on the second toes of their feet, which they held off the ground like folded switchblades.

The injured toe showed signs of the kind of changes in bone that occur over many weeks to months, suggesting that this Talos lived with a serious injury to its foot for a long time.

Evidence of injury can shed light on how a body part was used. An injury to the foot of a raptor dinosaur, for example, can yield new details about the potential function of its claws.

This particular injury was restricted to the toe with the enlarged claw — it had either been fractured or bitten and then suffered from a localized infection.

The scientists detailed their findings online in the journal PLoS ONE.