Құс еліктеуші динозавр: Avimimus туралы жазбалар

Extinct genus of reptiles

Avimimus (,/eɪ//v//ᵻ/'/m//aɪ//m//ə//s/ AYvimEYEməs), meaning "bird mimic" (Latin avis = bird + mimus = mimic), is a genus of oviraptorosaurian theropod dinosaur, named for its bird like characteristics, that lived in the late Cretaceous in what is now Mongolia, around 85 to 70 million years ago.

The remains of Avimimus were recovered by Russian paleontologists and officially described by Dr. Sergei Kurzanov in 1981. The Avimimus fossils were initially described as having come from the Djadokta Formation by Kurzanov; however, in a 2006 description of a new specimen, Watabe and colleagues noted that Kurzanov was probably mistaken about the provenance, and it is more likely that Avimimus hailed from the more recent Nemegt Formation. The type species is A. portentosus. A variety of isolated bones that have been attributed to Avimimus were considered to be distinct from A. portentosus, and were initially referred to as Avimimus sp. In 2008, a team of Canadian, American, and Mongolian paleontologists headed by Phil Currie reported in 2006 an extensive bonebed of Avimimus sp. fossils. The bonebed is in the Nemegt Formation, 10.5 meters above the Barun Goyot Formation, in the Gobi Desert. The team reported finding abundant bones of at least ten individuals of Avimimus, but the deposit may hold more. All individuals were either adult or subadult, and the adults showed little variation in size, suggesting determinate growth. The team also suggests that the individuals were found together because they were gregarious in life, providing possible indications that Avimimus formed age segregated groups for either lekking or flocking purposes. The adults showed a greater degree of skeletal fusion in the tarsometatarsus and tibiotarsus, and also more prominent muscle scars. The preservation of the bonebeds suggest that they were buried rapidly, uncovered by rapid flow of water, and then buried again a short distance away. In 2018, Avimimus sp. was formally described as a new species, A. nemegtensis.

Avimimus was a small, bird like dinosaur with a length of 1.5 m (5 ft). Kurzanov, in 1987, also reported the presence of quill knobs, and while Chiappe confirmed the presence of bumps on the ulna, their function remained unclear. Kurzanov was so convinced they were attachment points for feathers that he concluded that Avimimus may have been capable of weak flight. Kurzanov placed Avimimus in its own family, Avimimidae, in 1981. In 1991, Sankar Chatterjee erected the Order Avimimiformes to include Avimimus. Neither of these group names is used frequently by paleontologists as they include only a single species. More recent studies have shown that Avimimus is best grouped within the Oviraptoridae, within the subgroup Elmisaurinae. The following cladogram follows an analysis by Phil Senter, 2007.

The Barun Goyot Formation of Mongolia, is estimated to date back to the Campanian stage, between 84 and 70 million years ago of the Late Cretaceous period. During the Late Cretaceous period, the land that is now the Barun Goyot Formation had an arid environment with fields of sand dunes and only intermittent streams. It is slightly younger than the nearby Djadochta Formation, and seems to have been slightly wetter. The region that is preserved in the Barun Goyot Formation was home to the maniraptoran Hulsanpes perlei, the oviraptorids Conchoraptor gracilis and Ajancingenia yanshini, the alvarezsaurids Ceratonykus oculatus, Mononykus and Parvicursor remotus, the pachycephalosaur Tylocephale gilmorei, the ankylosaurs Saichania chulsanensis and Tarchia gigantea, and the ceratopsians Bagaceratops rozhdestvenskyi, Breviceratops kozlowskii, Lamaceratops tereschenkoi and Platyceratops tatarinovi. The largest dinosaur among them was the titanosaur Quaesitosaurus orientalis. It was observed that many of the same genera were present at the Barun Goyot and Djadochta Formations, though there was variation at the species level. Vertebrates present in the Barun Goyot Formation included the primitive birds Gobipteryx minuta and Hollanda luceria and the lizards Estesia mongoliensis, Ovoo gurvel, Proplatynotia longirostrata and Gobiderma pulchrum. The early mammals that were present in this region during the time of Avimimus were the placental mammals Asioryctes nemegetensis and Barunlestes butleri, the amphibian Gobiates khermeentsavi, the multituberculate mammals Catopsbaatar catopsaloides, Chulsanbaatar vulgaris and Nemegtbaatar gobiensis, and the marsupial mammal Asiatherium reshetovi and Deltatheridium pretrituberculare. Numerous dinosaur eggshells found in this region support the presence of sauropods and maniraptors.