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Byronosaurus
Byronosaurus is a genus of troodontid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of Mongolia.
In 1993, Michael Novacek, a member of an American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Gobi Desert, discovered the skeleton of a small theropod at Ukhaa Tolgod. This was further excavated in 1994 and 1995. The find was illustrated in a publication in 1994. On 15 July 1996, at the Bolor's Hill site, about eight kilometers (five miles) away from the original location, a second specimen was discovered, a skull.
In 2000, Mark Norell, Peter Makovicky and James Clark named and described the type species Byronosaurus jaffei. The species name as a whole honoured Byron Jaffe, "in recognition of his family's support for the Mongolian Academy of Sciences-American Museum of Natural History Paleontological Expeditions".
The holotype, IGM 100/983, was found in a layer of the Djadochta Formation dating from the late Campanian. It consists of a partial skeleton with skull. It contains a partial skull with lower jaws, three neck vertebrae, three back vertebrae, a piece of a sacral vertebra, four partial tail vertebrae, ribs, the lower end of a thighbone, the upper ends of a shinbone and calf bone, a second metatarsal and three toe phalanges. The paratype, specimen IGM 100/984, is the skull found in 1996, of which only the snout has been preserved. Both specimens are of adult individuals.
In 2003, the type specimen of Byronosaurus was described in detail. Makovicky and his colleagues found that Byronosaurus had a pneumatised snout with a sinus in each maxilla.
In 2009, two front skulls and lower jaws of very young, perhaps newly hatched, individuals, specimens IGM 100/972 and IGM 100/974, were referred to Byronosaurus, after originally having been identified as Velociraptor exemplars. Bever and Norell estimated that the skull length of IGM 100/972 and IGM 100/974 were about 22.6 cm (8.9 in) and 25.4 cm (10.0 in), respectively.
In 2017, the researchers who described a troodontid Almas ukhaa suggested that the specimens described by Bever and Norell (2009) don't belong to Byronosaurus based on different features found in the skull such as the number of maxillary teeth in both specimens being significantly fewer than this genus. They argued that these specimens are more closely related to A. ukhaa than to B. jaffei.
Byronosaurus was a small dinosaur, measuring about 1.5–2 m (4.9–6.6 ft) long and 50 cm (20 in) tall; it weighed only about 4–20 kg (8.8–44.1 lb). Unlike most other troodontids, its teeth seem to lack serrations just like its closest relative Xixiasaurus, probably a plesiomorphic trait among troodontids. The Ukhaa perinates show that Byronosaurus had a buccal maxillary groove and a recessed interfenestral bar.
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Byronosaurus
Byronosaurus is a genus of troodontid dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous Period of Mongolia.
In 1993, Michael Novacek, a member of an American Museum of Natural History expedition to the Gobi Desert, discovered the skeleton of a small theropod at Ukhaa Tolgod. This was further excavated in 1994 and 1995. The find was illustrated in a publication in 1994. On 15 July 1996, at the Bolor's Hill site, about eight kilometers (five miles) away from the original location, a second specimen was discovered, a skull.
In 2000, Mark Norell, Peter Makovicky and James Clark named and described the type species Byronosaurus jaffei. The species name as a whole honoured Byron Jaffe, "in recognition of his family's support for the Mongolian Academy of Sciences-American Museum of Natural History Paleontological Expeditions".
The holotype, IGM 100/983, was found in a layer of the Djadochta Formation dating from the late Campanian. It consists of a partial skeleton with skull. It contains a partial skull with lower jaws, three neck vertebrae, three back vertebrae, a piece of a sacral vertebra, four partial tail vertebrae, ribs, the lower end of a thighbone, the upper ends of a shinbone and calf bone, a second metatarsal and three toe phalanges. The paratype, specimen IGM 100/984, is the skull found in 1996, of which only the snout has been preserved. Both specimens are of adult individuals.
In 2003, the type specimen of Byronosaurus was described in detail. Makovicky and his colleagues found that Byronosaurus had a pneumatised snout with a sinus in each maxilla.
In 2009, two front skulls and lower jaws of very young, perhaps newly hatched, individuals, specimens IGM 100/972 and IGM 100/974, were referred to Byronosaurus, after originally having been identified as Velociraptor exemplars. Bever and Norell estimated that the skull length of IGM 100/972 and IGM 100/974 were about 22.6 cm (8.9 in) and 25.4 cm (10.0 in), respectively.
In 2017, the researchers who described a troodontid Almas ukhaa suggested that the specimens described by Bever and Norell (2009) don't belong to Byronosaurus based on different features found in the skull such as the number of maxillary teeth in both specimens being significantly fewer than this genus. They argued that these specimens are more closely related to A. ukhaa than to B. jaffei.
Byronosaurus was a small dinosaur, measuring about 1.5–2 m (4.9–6.6 ft) long and 50 cm (20 in) tall; it weighed only about 4–20 kg (8.8–44.1 lb). Unlike most other troodontids, its teeth seem to lack serrations just like its closest relative Xixiasaurus, probably a plesiomorphic trait among troodontids. The Ukhaa perinates show that Byronosaurus had a buccal maxillary groove and a recessed interfenestral bar.