Sinovenator
| Sinovenator | ||||||||||||
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Sinovenator fossil |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Lower Cretaceous ( Barremium to Early Aptian ) | ||||||||||||
| 130.7 to 123 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Sinovenator | ||||||||||||
| Xu et al. , 2002 |
Sinovenator ("hunter from China") is a genus of theropod dinosaurs from the group of Troodontidae . The name is made up of the Greek Σινάι “China, Chinese, Chinese” and the Latin venator “hunter”. The animal was about the size of a chicken.
The finds come from the Lower Cretaceous and are dated to an age of around 131 to 123 million years , which roughly corresponds to the Barremian and early Aptian periods . Both fossils were found in the lower Yixian Formation in China . The holotype of Sinovenator changii named IVPP 12615 was described by Xu, Norell, Wang, Mackovicky and Wu in 2002. This is an incomplete skull with a dismantled skeleton. The other find, IVPP 12583, is an incomplete skeleton, which, however, still has its original connection. The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IVPP) in Beijing has these two finds.
Sinovenator was a basal troodontid and is the oldest and least developed representative of this family group to date (the undescribed find WDC DML 001 from the Kimmeridgian of the Morrison Formation in the United States is even older, but already much more developed).
Sinovenator shows the most primitive representatives of the Dromaeosauridae and the Avialae consistent features that suggest a common descent of these three representatives of the Paraves .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Xing Xu , Mark A. Norell , Xiao-lin Wang, Makovicky, Peter J. , Xiao-chun Wu: A basal troodontid from the Early Cretaceous of China. In: Nature . Vol. 415, No. 6873, 14 February 2002, pp. 780-784, doi : 10.1038 / 415780a .