A new Late Cretaceous titanosaur sauropod from the Bauru Basin of Brazil, Uberabatitan ribeiroi gen. et sp. nov., represented by at least three specimens, is described. The material comes from a level of coarse sandstone within the Serra da Galga sequence in Uberaba County, Minas Gerais State. The fossiliferous strata belong to the Marı´lia Formation (Serra da Galga Member), Bauru Group, considered to be Maastricht ... Read more »

Only two ornithomimid genera, Ornithomimus and Struthiomimus, are currently known from the Upper Cretaceous of North America. However, a number of ornithomimid elements from Alberta’s Dinosaur Park Formation (Upper Campanian), cannot be assigned to either Ornithomimus or Struthiomimus. These bones, including a frontal, caudal vertebrae, and unguals of the manus and the pes, come from animals significantly larger th ... Read more »

The Kuehneosauridae (Late Triassic, Britain, USA) had remarkable adaptations, most notably their elongate mid-dorsal ribs that were presumably covered with a skin membrane in life. These lateral ‘wings’ have always been linked with some form of gliding adaptation, but quantitative studies have been limited. Here, we provide a thorough aerodynamic analysis of both genera of British kuehneosaurids based on theory and ... Read more »

A phylogenetic analysis of reproductive and oological (egg) traits of theropod taxa allows determination of the sequence in which these traits evolved in Theropoda. Our results indicate that several avian reproductive traits, such as adults sitting on eggs, asymmetrical eggs, unornamented eggshell surface, and complex eggshell ultrastructure,were already present in non-avian maniraptorans, and could have evolved in ... Read more »

The oldest records of mammal-like therapsids in Laurasia are from the Ocher Complex of Russia and the Xidagou Formation of China, whereas in Gondwana they are restricted to the Eodicynodon Assemblage Zone, Beaufort Group of the South African Karoo. This fauna, which is relatively depauperate when compared with younger assemblage zones from the Karoo, shows an amazing diversity of therapsids including: dinocephalian ... Read more »

Light Detection And Range (LiDAR) imaging provides a means to model the 3D geometry of fossil tracks in the field with high accuracy. This represents a considerable advance for the science of vertebrate ichnology in which traditional field methods suffer from a significant degree of abstraction and lack the resolution required to interpret tracks quantitatively. Three-dimensional LiDAR models provide additional mor ... Read more »

A new alvarezsaur, Albertonykus borealis, is described from the Lower Maastrichtian of the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, Alberta, Canada. Forelimb and hindlimb elements from at least two individuals were recovered from the Albertosaurus bonebed at Dry Island Provincial Park, along with pedal phalanges from nearby localities. Phylogenetic analysis shows that Albertonykus is the sister taxon of the Asian clade Mononyki ... Read more »

We report on a new Early Cretaceous bird from China that sheds significant light on the evolutionary transition between primitive birds with a long bony tail and those with a short tail ending in a pygostyle. A cladistic analysis of basal birds supports the placement of the new fossil as the sister-taxon of all pygostylians. Possessing a unique hand morphology with a phalangeal formula of 2-3-3-x-x and a reduced nu ... Read more »