Remember the perfectly preserved complete articulated
skeleton of a young dinosaur that was presented to the press last year? Well,
the paper describing it has finally been published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Science. ‘Otto’, also known as the Kelheim theropod, has now a proper scientific name,
Sciurumimus albersdoerferi, the generic name meaning “Squirrel mimic” (in
reference to its bushy tail) and the specific name honors Raimund Albersdörfer,
who made the specimen available for study. The fossil was found near Painten, Bavaria
(Germany) and dates from the upper Kimmeridgian. Besides the exquisite state of
preservation of the fossil that shows evidence of proto-feathers covering at
least part of the body, the importance of Sciurumimus stems from its
phylogenetic position on the dinosaur evolutionary tree. It is a megalosauroid, sister taxon to the
likes of Megalosaurus, Torvosaurus and Eustreptospondylus, therefore
representing the most basal theropod showing direct evidence of feathers, and
the most complete megalosauroid remain yet discovered. This raises the
interesting possibility that feathers might be a common inherited trait to all theropods
and even to all dinosaurs if indeed the feather-like structures found on
Tianyulong (an heterodontosaur) and quills on the tail of Psittacosaurus (a Ceratopsian)
are analogous structures.
References:
Oliver W. M. Rauhut, Christian Foth, Helmut Tischlinger, and
Mark A. Norell (2012) Exceptionally preserved juvenile megalosauroid theropod
dinosaur with filamentous integument from the Late Jurassic of Germany, PNAS,
Advanced online publication.