A New Oviraptorid Dinosaur (Dinosauria: Oviraptorosauria) from the Late Cretaceous of Southern China and Its Paleobiogeographical Implications.

Junchang Lü,Yuhua Shang,Caizhi Shen,Yuong-Nam Lee,Di Liu,Yoshitsugu Kobayashi,Hanyong Pu,Huali Chang,Martin Kundrát,Li Xu

doi:10.1038/srep11490

Junchang Lü, Yuhua Shang + Show 8 more

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https://doi.org/10.1038/srep11490

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The Ganzhou area of Jiangxi Province, southern China is becoming one of the most productive oviraptorosaurian localities in the world. A new oviraptorid dinosaur was unearthed from the uppermost Upper Cretaceous Nanxiong Formation of Ganzhou area. It is characterized by an anterodorsally sloping occiput and quadrate (a feature shared with Citipati), a circular supratemporal fenestra that is much smaller than the lower temporal fenestra, and a dentary in which the dorsal margin above the external mandibular fenestra is strongly concave ventrally. The position of the anteroventral corner of the external naris in relation to the posterodorsal corner of the antorbital fenestra provides new insight into the craniofacial evolution of oviraptorosaurid dinosaurs. A phylogenetic analysis recovers the new taxon as closely related to the Mongolian Citipati. Six oviraptorid dinosaurs from the Nanxiong Formation (Ganzhou and Nanxiong) are distributed within three clades of the family. Each of the three clades from the Nanxiong Formation has close relatives in Inner Mongolia and Mongolia, and in both places each clade may have had a specific diet or occupied a different ecological niche. Oviraptorid dinosaurs were geographically widespread across Asia in the latest Cretaceous and were an important component of terrestrial ecosystems during this time.

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Oviraptorosaurs are an unusual group of feathered dinosaurs, which are distinguished from other maniraptoran theropods by their unique skull and ischial morphologies
Huanansaurus differs from most oviraptorosaurs by the anterodorsally sloping occiput and quadrate, and the anteroventral corner of the external naris is slightly below the horizontal line projected through the posterodorsal corner of the antorbital fenestra; posterior margin of the fourth cervical forms straight line between the postzygapophyses in dorsal view
Huanansaurus differs from Rinchenia mongoliensis47(= Oviraptor mongoliensis[48]; Osmólska et al.15) in that Huanansaurus lacks a convex crest on the frontals and parietals, the dorsal margin of the dentary above the external mandibular fenestra is concave, the anteroventral corner of the external naris is slightly below the horizontal line projected through the posterodorsal corner of the antorbital fenestra, whilst Rinchenia mongoliensis bears a distinct convex crest on the frontals and parietals, the anteroventral corner of the external naris is above the horizontal line projected through the posterodorsal corner of the antorbital fenestra in Rinchenia (Fig. 4)