Prehistoric Life/Dinosaurs/Birdlike Theropods: Difference between revisions

* ''[[Stock Dinosaurs|Oviraptor]]'' had many relatives. Most of them have been found since the 1990s in Cretaceous Asia, but one from in North America has also been known since the 1910s: ''Chirostenotes'', to this day still one of the few North-American oviraptorosaurs. Despite this “privileged” position, ''Chirostenotes'' remains a rather obscure dinosaur, and has had a convoluted [[Science Marches On]]-story. Since its first skeleton lacked the skull, was initially classified a “generic toothed coelurosaur”. Its toothless skull was found in 1940, but was named ''Caenagnathus'' and believed to be a bird. In the 1980s, scientists decided that ''Caenagnathus'' and ''Chirostenotes'' were one and the same, and “''Caenagnathus''” fell in disuse, having been created after the other name.<br />But in recent years, someone has again made these genera distinct. Since the skull showed only a small relief on the nose, ''Chirostenotes'' was shown almost-crestless in old portraits; but the skull was incomplete, and now is thought it had a large crest similar to that of ''Citipati'': that is, the animal which people usually think of when they think “''Oviraptor''”. Indeed, most alleged “''Oviraptor''” remains have been reclassified into other genera: among these the famous “dinosaur on its nest” found in the 1990s, which also contributed to debunk the classic “egg-robbing specialist” reputation.<br />As a whole, oviraptorosaurs were quite similar to each other, but their skull ornamentations were more varied, and only the "most evolved" species were toothless and had the well-known cassowary-like crest. The oviraptorosaurs' way of life still remains an enigma: today most scientists think they were omnivorous animals that ate berries as well as insects (flowering plants were already diverse in the Cretaceous); this however doesn't exclude that they occasionally ate some unattended eggs if they got the chance: their short strong jaws and agile hands are, after all, well-suited for this –- many modern mammalian carnivores, though mainly [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|carnivorous]], also eat eggs if they have the chance. Some other primitive oviraptorosaurs are listed below: among them, several are known from feathered fossils from Liaoning.

* When did the Great Feather Adventure begin? The answer: in 1980, in the Mongolian Gobi Desert, the same place where ''Oviraptor'' and ''Velociraptor'' were first discovered. That year, a new kind of Late Cretaceous “coelurosaur” was described from a partial skeleton, which astonished the scientist who found it. He chose to name his find ''Avimimus'' - “bird mimic”, the same as ''Ornithomimus'', only with a Latin prefix instead of Greek. Despite this, ''Avimimus'' was not an ornithomimid, but an only 5 ft long, late-surviving basal oviraptorosaur. Nothing special per-se… except for one thing: it was the ''very first'' dinosaur whose skeleton showed some evidence of feathers. Not prints on the rock however, only a crest on its arm-bones that resembled that of modern birds. For about 15 years since then, ''Avimimus'' has been the ''only'' non-avian dinosaur regularly portrayed with feathers – often in an incorrect way: certain depictions showed it as a short-winged ''Archaeopteryx'' with the same head-shape, jaws filled with teeth, and splayed forelimbs, as if was about to take off.<br />It actually had a short head and short arms typical of oviraptorousars, so it couldn’t fly. However, it should be noted that ''Avimimus'' lacked an oviraptorian crest, and also had serrations in its beak which could have worked as teeth. Since the end of the 1990s, more and more new feathered dinosaurs fossils were found in China, making ''Avimimus'' ‘s relevance mainly historical at this point.

[[Category:UsefulPrehistoric NotesLife]]