The taxonomy of a new parvicursorine alvarezsauroid specimen IVPP V20341 (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous Wulansuhai Formation of Bayan Mandahu, Inner Mongolia, China

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1 Department of Earth Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Hong Kong
2 Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origin of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
3 Department of Biological Sciences, The George Washington University, Washington, D.C., USA
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.702v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Biodiversity, Evolutionary Studies, Paleontology, Taxonomy, Zoology
Keywords
Alvarezsauroid, Parvicursorine, Theropod, Upper Cretaceous, Campanian, Inner Mongolia
Copyright
© 2014 Pittman et al.
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Pittman M, Xu X, Stiegler JB. 2014. The taxonomy of a new parvicursorine alvarezsauroid specimen IVPP V20341 (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Upper Cretaceous Wulansuhai Formation of Bayan Mandahu, Inner Mongolia, China. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e702v1

Abstract

A new parvicursorine alvarezsauroid theropod specimen IVPP V20341 from the Upper Cretaceous Wulansuhai Formation of Bayan Mandahu, Inner Mongolia, China is described. IVPP V20341 appears to be distinguishable amongst alvarezsauroids by cervical proceoly and relatively larger semi-circular neural canals, but these features are not proposed as autapomorphies because current knowledge of alvarezsauroid necks and tails remains sparse. IVPP V20341 is distinguishable from Linhenykus - the sole parvicursorine at Bayan Mandahu - by 13 anatomical features that mostly relate to cervical and caudal vertebrae. However, it is unclear how these vertebral elements compare positionally along the spine, so more complete future finds could revise the observed differences. Thus, there are still seven parvicursorine species from the Cretaceous Gobi Basin after the discovery of IVPP V20341.

Author Comment

This is a submission to PeerJ for review.

Supplemental Information

Alvarezsauroid theropod taxon information and body size data

Supplemental tables: S1, Alvarezsauroid theropod taxon information, compiled from the literature and first-hand study. S2, Alvarezsauroid body size data, compiled from the literature and first-hand study.

DOI: 10.7287/peerj.preprints.702v1/supp-1