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Caudipteryx was a genus of small, peacock-sized Early Cretaceous theropods (members of Theropoda, the group of typically carnivorous dinosaurs) that lived about 125 million years ago. Its most remarkable feature was its feathers.
Two species have been named, C. zoui and C. dongi. Caudipteryx fossils were first discovered in the Liaoning Province of northeastern China in 1997. The animals had a short skull that retained only a few teeth in the front of the upper jaw. They had symmetrical, pennaceous feathers on its short tail and hands. The shortness of these feathers and their symmetry indicate that Caudipteryx could not fly, but it could possibly have been the descendant of flying ancestors. It is often surmised to have been a herbivore. In cladistic analyses, Caudipteryx is usually shown to be closely related to the Oviraptoridae.
[edit] Flightless bird?
While most scientists consider Caudipteryx hard evidence for the dinosaurian ancestry of birds, some scientists (e.g. Alan Feduccia) claim that Caudipteryx (along with all other maniraptorans) are not dinosaurs at all, but birds which evolved from a non-dinosaurian ancestor. They note that oviraptorosaurian fossils (and Caudipteryx in particular) have short tails, similar to the bird Confuciusornis, and skulls which show many birdlike features that are not found in theropods. Stomach stones were present in the Caudipteryx fossil, which indicate that these were herbivores, resembling Enantiornithes and flightless birds. The fossils also lack the serrated teeth typical of theropods. Feduccia and mammalian paleontologist Larry Martin believe these fossils are the remains of flightless birds that evolved from a flying ancestor, probably Archaeopteryx (Martin & Czerkas, 2000). This view is supported by other researchers who consider birds to be descendents of dinosaurs, most notably Gregory S. Paul (2002), Lu et al. (2002), and Maryanska et al. (2002).
[edit] References
- Ji, Q.; Currie, Philip J; Norell, M.; and Ji, S.-A. (1998): Two feathered dinosaurs from northeastern China. Nature 393: 753-761. DOI:10.1038/31635 PDF fulltext
- Lu, J.; Dong, Z.; Azuma, Y.; Barsbold, Rinchen & Tomida, Y. (2002): Oviraptorosaurs compared to birds. In: Zhou, Zhonghe & Zhang, Fucheng (eds.): Proceedings of the 5th Symposium of the Society of Avian Paleontology and Evolution: 175-189. Beijing Science Press.
- Martin, Larry D. & Czerkas, Stephan A. (2000): The Fossil Record of Feather Evolution in the Mesozoic. Ameriocna Zoologist 40(4): 687–694. PDF fulltext
- Maryanska, Teresa; Osmólska, Halszka & Wolsam, Mieczysław (2002): Avialian status for Oviraptorosauria. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 47(1): 97-116. PDF fulltext
- Paul, Gregory (2002): Dinosaurs of the Air: The Evolution and Loss of Flight in Dinosaurs and Birds. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.
- Zhou, Zhonghe & Wang, Xiaolin (2000): A new species of Caudipteryx from the Yixian Formation of Liaoning, northeast China. Vertebrata Palasiatica 38(2): 113-130.
- Zhou, Zhonghe; Wang, Xiaolin; Zhang, Fucheng & Xu, X. (2000): Important features of Caudipteryx - Evidence from two nearly complete new specimens. Vertebrata Palasiatica 38(4): 241-254.
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