Itemirus is a genus of Dromaeosauridae theropod dinosaur from the Turonian aged Bissekty Formation of the Late Cretaceous period of Uzbekistan.
Discovery
Itemirus is known from a single small, damaged fossil braincase or
neurocranium, in 1958 found near the village of
Itemir at the
Dzharakuduk escarpment in layers of the Bissekty Formation. This
holotype has accession number PIN 327/699. The
type species,
Itemirus medullaris, was named and described by
Sergei Kurzanov in 1976. The generic name refers to Itemir. The specific name refers to the medulla oblongata, the part of the brain encased by the partial braincase.
[Kurzanov, S. M. (1976) Braincase structure in the carnosaur Itemirus n. gen. and some aspects of the cranial anatomy of dinosaurs. Paleontological Journal 10:361-369.]
Classification
Kurzanov noted anatomical similarities to the
Tyrannosauridae and the
Dromaeosauridae; he assigned
Itemirus to a separate
Itemiridae. In 2004,
Thomas Holtz suggested it was a member of the
Tyrannosauroidea.
[Holtz, T.R., 2004, "Tyrannosauroidea". In: D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, and H. Osmolska (eds.), The Dinosauria (second edition). University of California Press, Berkeley pp. 111-136] Nicholas Longrich and Philip J. Currie in 2009 included
Itemirus in a
cladistic analysis of internal
dromaeosaurid relationships and found it to be a
Velociraptorinae.
[Longrich, N.R. and Currie, P.J. (2009). "A microraptorine (Dinosauria–Dromaeosauridae) from the Late Cretaceous of North America." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106(13): 5002–5007. ] In 2014, during a study assigning more material to
Itemirus, it was found that the genus could be placed in
Dromaeosaurinae in a phylogeny.
See also
-
Timeline of dromaeosaurid research
External links
