Parvicursor

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Parvicursor

Parvicursor (meaning "small runner") is a genus

Genus

A genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the classification of living and fossil organisms. The taxonomic ranks are domain , kingdom , phylum, class , order , family , genus, and species....
of tiny maniraptora

Maniraptora

Maniraptora is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to Ornithomimus velox....
n dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs were the dominant vertebrate animals of Landform ecosystems for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic Period until the end of the Cretaceous Period , when most of them became extinct in the Cretaceous?Tertiary extinction event....
with long slender legs for fast running. At only about 39 cm

1 E-1 m

Image:Length one to ten scale.svg|110px|right|Click on the top for smaller lengths and on the bottom for larger lengthspoly 0 0 20 20 0 20 1 centimetre...
(~15 in) from snout to end of tail, and 162 grams (5.7 ounces) in weight, it is one of the smallest non-avian dinosaurs known from an adult specimen.

Like other members of the family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is a taxonomic rank. Exact details of formal nomenclature depend on the Nomenclature Codes which applies....
Alvarezsauridae

Alvarezsauridae

The Alvarezsauridae are an enigmatic family of small, long-legged running dinosaurs. Although originally thought to represent the earliest known flightless birds, a consensus of recent work suggests that they are primitive members of the Maniraptoriformes....
, the forelimbs of Parvicursor were short and stubby, with hands all but completely reduced to a single large claw, possibly useful for opening tough termite

Termite

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Encyclopedia

Parvicursor (meaning "small runner") is a genus

Genus

Maniraptora

Maniraptora is a clade of coelurosaurian dinosaurs which includes the birds and the dinosaurs that were more closely related to them than to Ornithomimus velox....
n dinosaur

Dinosaur

1 E-1 m

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is a taxonomic rank. Exact details of formal nomenclature depend on the Nomenclature Codes which applies....
Alvarezsauridae

Alvarezsauridae

Termite

The termites are a group of social insects usually classified at the Taxonomy of Order Isoptera . As truly social animals, they are termed eusocial along with the ants and some bees and wasps which are all placed in the separate Order Hymenoptera....
mounds or other types of digging. It is unlikely that the claw could have served much for defense, as it was short and not adapted for flexible movements — it is more likely it would do as the animal's name implies: cursor means runner.

Parvicursor is known from Late Cretaceous Campanian

Campanian

The Campanian is a faunal stage on the geologic time scale occurring from 83.5 ? 0.7 annum to 70.6 ? 0.6 Ma .It is the middle stage of the Late Cretaceous epoch ....
sediments at Khulsan, Mongolia

Mongolia

Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia and Central Asia. It borders Russia to the north and People's Republic of China to the south, east and west....
. The type species, P. remotus, is only known from one incomplete specimen, mostly pelvis

Pelvis

The pelvis or pelvic girdle is the irregular bone structure located at the base of the spine . In the adult human, it is formed by the sacrum and the coccyx, the caudal part of the axial skeleton, and a pair of hip bones, part of the appendicular skeleton or human leg....
and hind legs. Close relatives include Shuvuuia
Shuvuuia

Shuvuuia is a genus of bird-like theropod dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period of Mongolia. It is a member of the family Alvarezsauridae, small coelurosaurian dinosaurs which are characterized by short but powerful forelimbs specialized for digging....
and Mononykus
Mononykus

Mononykus was a theropod dinosaur from late Cretaceous Mongolia with long, skinny legs. It moved about on two legs, was very nimble, and could run at high speeds, something that would have been useful in the open desert plains where it lived....
, and together with these it is classified in the alvarezsaurid subfamily Mononykinae.

There may be a second, yet-unnamed, species of Parvicursor. Two specimens of tiny alvarezsaurids were described by Suzuki et al. in 2002. These authors considered the specimens to be juvenile Shuvuuia
Shuvuuia

Shuvuuia is a genus of bird-like theropod dinosaur from the late Cretaceous Period of Mongolia. It is a member of the family Alvarezsauridae, small coelurosaurian dinosaurs which are characterized by short but powerful forelimbs specialized for digging....
, which lived in the same formation. However, a study by Nick Longrich and Phil Currie

Phil Currie

Philip J. Currie is a Canada palaeontologist and museum curator who helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta and is now a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton....
in 2008 suggested that several characters of the skeleton, including fused wrist and pelvic bones, indicated that these specimens were in fact adults of a tiny alvarezsaurid species. A phylogenetic analysis found that they grouped together with Parvicursor, and the authors provisionally referred them to Parvicursor sp. pending further study.

External links

from Palaeos (technical)