Unenlagia
Unenlagia (meaning "half-bird" in Latinized Mapudungun) is a genus of unenlagiine theropod dinosaur that lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous period. The genus Unenlagia has been assigned two species: U. comahuensis, the type species described by Novas and Puerta in 1997, and U. paynemili, described by Calvo et al. in 2004.
Article
5 sectionsContents
- Discovery and naming
- Description
- Classification
- See also
- References
Unenlagia (meaning "half-bird" in Latinized Mapudungun) is a genus of unenlagiine theropod dinosaur that lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous period. The genus Unenlagia has been assigned two species: U. comahuensis, the type species described by Novas and Puerta in 1997, and U. paynemili, described by Calvo et al. in 2004.
==Discovery and naming== thumb|left|Casts of U. paynemili fossils; today the claw is considered one of the hand unguals, not of the foot as shown here In 1996 in the Neuquén province of Argentina a skeleton of a theropod was discovered in the Sierra del Portezuelo and reported the same year. In 1997 Fernando Emilio Novas and Pablo Puerta named and described Unenlagia comahuensis. The generic name is derived from Mapuche uñùm, 'bird', and llag, 'half', in reference to the fact that the describers considered the species to be a link between birds and more basal theropods. The specific name refers to the Comahue, the region the find was made.