Two New Alvarezsaurian Dino's from China

[Troodon]

One if my favorite and cool dinosaur groups are alvarezsaurian with their unique forelimb.  Here we have two new species being described from the early cretaceous of China, Xiyunykus pengi and Bannykus wulatensis.

 

 

https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(18)30987-4#.W370yzRIRZ4.twitter

 

 

One of the first informational Topics I put together 

 

 

[Jaimin013]

Very excited news! Can't wait to read more about this 

[Troodon]

Blog

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-rare-intermediate-fossils-insight-evolution.html

 

 

Newspaper

https://www.heritagedaily.com/2018/08/how-did-alvarezsaurian-dinosaurs-evolve-monodactyl-hand/121484

 

George Washington University

https://mediarelations.gwu.edu/rare-intermediate-fossils-give-researchers-insight-evolution-bird-dinosaur

 

[Troodon]

Closeup of bones and one of the sites, CoE in Palaeosciences

[DD1991]

Alvarezsaurs until earlier in this decade were problematic in terms of exact systematic position within Coelurosauria, because Late Cretaceous alvarezsaurs had a single enlarged claw, shortened forelimbs, and long snouts with tiny teeth. Sereno (2001) concluded that alvarezsaurs were more related to ornithomimosaurs than to birds, and Haplocheirus helped clear up remaining questions over alvarezsaur ancestry by pushing the fossil record of the group to the Jurassic, and showing that early alvarezsaurs had a three-fingered hand and other parts of the basal coelurosaur bauplan. The discovery of Xiyunykus and Bannykus illuminate the progression of morphological features in Alvarezsauria over time, including the Cretaceous. This process reminds me of when horses developed a single functional toe over the course of the Cenozoic.