Dinosaur Genera List corrections #113

[Dinogeorge@aol.com]

The following article appeared in the September 16, 1999 issue of Nature:

Nature 401, 262 - 266 (1999) © Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 

A dromaeosaurid dinosaur with a filamentous integument from the Yixian 
Formation of China

XING XU, XIAO-LIN WANG & XIAO-CHUN WU

Here is the abstract, also available for free at Nature's public Web site:

Dromaeosaurids, despite their notoriety, are poorly characterized 
meat-eating dinosaurs, and were previously known only from 
disarticulated or fragmentary specimens. Many studies have denied their 
close relationship to birds. Here we report the best represented and 
probably the earliest dromaeosaurid yet discovered, Sinornithosaurus 
millenii gen. et sp. nov., from Sihetun, the famous Mesozoic 
fish-dinosaur-bird locality in China. Sinornithosaurus not only greatly 
increases our knowledge of Dromaeosauridae but also provides evidence 
for a filamentous integument in this group. It is remarkably similar to 
early birds postcranially. The shoulder girdle shows that terrestrial 
dromaeosaurids had attained the prerequisites for powered, flapping 
flight, supporting the idea that bird flight originated from the ground 
up. The discovery of Sinornithosaurus widens the distribution of 
integumentary filaments among non-avian theropods. Phylogenetic analysis 
indicates that, among known theropods with integumentary filaments or 
feathers, Dromaeosauridae is the most bird-like, and is more closely 
related to birds than is Troodontidae.

Accordingly, we add genus #854 to the Dinosaur Genera List:

Sinornithosaurus Xu, Wang & Wu, 1999

Masahiro Tanimoto kindly sent the correct name of the author of the 
Yimenosaurus description, so the entry for this genus changes to:

Yimenosaurus Bai vide Bai, Yang & Wang, 1990

I still do not have the title of the article or the journal, but at least I 
now know the name of the describer. Bai described the genus within a larger 
paper by himself, Yang & Wang in 1990, hence the vide attribution.

Finally, the article describing the nodosaurid Animantarx has reached me 
(Utah Geological Survey Miscellaneous Publication 99-1, Vertebrate 
Paleontology in Utah, David Gillette, editor), so I can update the listing 
for that genus. Note that the name was spelled differently while the genus 
was a nomen nudum; the listing is now correct and up to date:

Animantarx Carpenter, Kirkland, Burge & Bird, 1999

Type species name is Animantarx ramaljonesi.