Basal tyrannosauroids from China and evidence for protofeathers in tyrannosauroids

被引:190
作者
Xu, X
Norell, MA
Kuang, XW
Wang, XL
Zhao, Q
Jia, CK
机构
[1] Amer Museum Nat Hist, New York, NY 10024 USA
[2] Chinese Acad Sci, Inst Vertebrate Paleontol & Paleoanthropol, Beijing 100044, Peoples R China
[3] Tianjin Museum Nat Hist, Tianjin 300074, Peoples R China
基金
美国国家科学基金会; 中国国家自然科学基金;
关键词
D O I
10.1038/nature02855
中图分类号
O [数理科学和化学]; P [天文学、地球科学]; Q [生物科学]; N [自然科学总论];
学科分类号
07 ; 0710 ; 09 ;
摘要
Tyrannosauroids are one of the last and the most successful large-bodied predatory dinosaur groups(1-5), but their early history remains poorly understood. Here we report a new basal tyrannosauroid from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of western Liaoning, China, which is small and gracile and has relatively long arms with three-fingered hands. The new taxon is the earliest known unquestionable tyrannosauroid found so far(6-9). It shows a mosaic of characters, including a derived cranial structure resembling that of derived tyrannosauroids(1-5) and a primitive postcranial skeleton similar to basal coelurosaurians. One of the specimens also preserves a filamentous integumentary covering similar to that of other coelurosaurian theropods from western Liaoning. This provides the first direct fossil evidence that tyrannosauroids had protofeathers.
引用
收藏
页码:680 / 684
页数:5
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