''Bambiraptor'' is a
Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', the ...
, 72-million-year-old,
bird-like dromaeosaurid
Dromaeosauridae () is a family of feathered theropod dinosaurs. They were generally small to medium-sized feathered carnivores that flourished in the Cretaceous Period. The name Dromaeosauridae means 'running lizards', from Greek ('), meaning ...
theropod
Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally c ...
dinosaur
Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...
described by scientists at the
University of Kansas
The University of Kansas (KU) is a public research university with its main campus in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, and several satellite campuses, research and educational centers, medical centers, and classes across the state of Kansas. Tw ...
,
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...
, and the
University of New Orleans
The University of New Orleans (UNO) is a public research university in New Orleans, Louisiana. It is a member of the University of Louisiana System and the Urban 13 association. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High rese ...
.
The holotype fossil is less than one meter long, although this specimen appears to be a juvenile, and it is possible that ''Bambiraptor'' is a juvenile ''
Saurornitholestes
''Saurornitholestes'' ("lizard-bird thief") is a genus of carnivorous dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur from the late Cretaceous of Canada (Alberta) and the United States (Montana, New Mexico, Alabama, North Carolina, and South Carolina).
Two spec ...
''.
[ It is even suspected that the type specimen is a chimera, based on the fact that "there are elements of three different similarly sized lower legs included in the holotype."] Because of its small size, it was named ''Bambiraptor feinbergi'', after the popular Disney movie character (the name literally translates to "Bambi thief") and the surname of the wealthy family who bought and lent the specimen to the new Graves Museum of Natural History in Florida
Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
.
Discovery
The ''Bambiraptor'' skeleton was discovered in 1995 by 14-year-old fossil hunter Wes Linster, who was looking for dinosaur bones with his parents near Glacier National Park in Montana
Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...
, United States. Linster told ''Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...
'' magazine that he uncovered the skeleton on a tall hill and was amazed at his discovery. "I bolted down the hill to get my mom because I knew I shouldn't be messing with it", he said. The bones that Linster discovered on that hilltop led to the excavation of a skeleton that was approximately 95 percent complete. Because of its completeness Florida Paleontology Institute Director Martin Shugar compared it to the Rosetta Stone
The Rosetta Stone is a stele composed of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a Rosetta Stone decree, decree issued in Memphis, Egypt, in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle te ...
that enabled archaeologists to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics
Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
. Yale paleontologist John Ostrom
John Harold Ostrom (February 18, 1928 – July 16, 2005) was an American paleontologist who revolutionized modern understanding of dinosaurs in the 1960s.
As first proposed by Thomas Henry Huxley in the 1860s, Ostrom showed that dinosaurs were ...
, who reintroduced the theory of bird evolution from dinosaurs after his 1964 discovery of ''Deinonychus
''Deinonychus'' ( ; ) is a genus of dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaur with one described species, ''Deinonychus antirrhopus''. This species, which could grow up to long, lived during the early Cretaceous Period, about 115–108 million ye ...
'' in Wyoming
Wyoming () is a U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the south ...
, agreed, calling the specimen a "jewel", and telling reporters that the completeness and undistorted qualities of the bones should help scientists further understand the dinosaur-bird link.
The fossil first was seen as the young of ''Saurornitholestes'' and in 1997 reported as belonging to a ''Velociraptor
''Velociraptor'' (; ) is a genus of small dromaeosaurid dinosaur that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous epoch, about 75 million to 71 million years ago. Two species are currently recognized, although others have been assigned in the pa ...
'' sp. In 2000 it was named and described by David Burnham, Kraig Derstler, Phil Currie
Philip John Currie (born March 13, 1949) is a Canadian palaeontologist and museum curator who helped found the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta and is now a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In the ...
, Robert Bakker
Robert Thomas Bakker (born March 24, 1945) is an American paleontologist who helped reshape modern theories about dinosaurs, particularly by adding support to the theory that some dinosaurs were endothermic (warm-blooded). Along with his mentor J ...
, Zhou Zhonge and John Ostrom as a new genus: ''Bambiraptor feinbergi''. The generic name is derived from Bambi
''Bambi'' is a 1942 American animated drama film directed by David Hand (supervising a team of sequence directors), produced by Walt Disney and based on the 1923 book ''Bambi, a Life in the Woods'' by Austrian author and hunter Felix Salten. ...
, in reference to the young age of the specimen, and a Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''raptor'', "seizer". The specific epithet
In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...
honours Michael and Ann Feinberg who acquired the specimen from a fossil poacher and made it available to science. In 2000 George Olshevsky suggested the emended epithet "feinbergorum", the plural
The plural (sometimes abbreviated pl., pl, or ), in many languages, is one of the values of the grammatical category of number. The plural of a noun typically denotes a quantity greater than the default quantity represented by that noun. This de ...
genitive
In grammar, the genitive case (abbreviated ) is the grammatical case that marks a word, usually a noun, as modifying another word, also usually a noun—thus indicating an attributive relationship of one noun to the other noun. A genitive can al ...
, and this was followed by some authors but such emendations are no longer allowed by the ICZN
The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is a widely accepted convention in zoology that rules the formal scientific naming of organisms treated as animals. It is also informally known as the ICZN Code, for its publisher, the I ...
.
The holotype
A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...
specimen AMNH FR 30556 (previously AMNH 001 and FIP 001, sometimes wrongly referred to as AMNH FR 30554), was uncovered in layers of the Upper Two Medicine Formation
The Two Medicine Formation is a geological formation, or rock body, in northwestern Montana and southern Alberta that was deposited between and (million years ago), during Campanian (Late Cretaceous) time. It crops out to the east of the Rocky M ...
dating to the late Campanian
The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous Epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campanian s ...
. It is currently housed at the American Museum of Natural History
The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
, New York. It consists of a partially articulated largely complete skeleton with skull of a juvenile individual. Though the right side of the skeleton is damaged, most bones are uncompressed and well-preserved. The end of the tail is lacking. Also a paratype
In zoology and botany, a paratype is a specimen of an organism that helps define what the scientific name of a species and other taxon actually represents, but it is not the holotype (and in botany is also neither an isotype nor a syntype). Of ...
was assigned in 2000, FIP 002-136, consisting of thirty-four skeletal elements of at least two adult individuals found near the holotype. In 2004 an upper jaw bone was referred to the species, specimen MOR 553S-7-30-91-274.
Description
While adult specimens are known, only the type specimen, a juvenile, has been described. This juvenile ''Bambiraptor'' has a preserved length of ,[Holtz, Thomas R. Jr. (2011). ''Dinosaurs: The Most Complete, Up-to-Date Encyclopedia for Dinosaur Lovers of All Ages''.]
Winter 2010 Appendix.
/ref> and an estimated total length of one metre. It perhaps weighed only two kilograms (4.4 lb). It had long hindlimbs, indicating it could have been a fast runner. It also had very long arms and a well-developed wishbone
Wishbone commonly refers to:
* Furcula, a fork-shaped bone in birds and some dinosaurs
Wishbone may also refer to:
* Wish-Bone, an American salad dressing and condiment company
* Wishbone formation, a type of offense in American football
* Wish ...
. According to an SVP abstract published in 2021, the holotype is 30-40% the size of specimen MOR 553S-7-30-91-274. Directly scaling up the holotype specimen gives a length of 2.5-3.3 m. However, this is likely a low estimate since the specimen is a maxilla with proportions like that of the holotype, and juvenile animals tend to have proportionally longer skulls. In 2010 Gregory S. Paul
Gregory Scott Paul (born December 24, 1954) is an American freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology, and more recently has examined sociology and theology. He is best known for his work and research on theropod dino ...
estimated the adult length at , the weight at five kilogrammes.
Forelimbs
Research done by Phil Senter of the Lamar State College
Lamar University (Lamar or LU) is a public university in Beaumont, Texas. Lamar has been a member of the Texas State University System since 1995. It was the flagship institution of the former Lamar University System. As of the fall of 2021, the ...
in Orange, Texas
Orange is a city and the county seat of Orange County, Texas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city population was 19,324. It is the easternmost city in Texas, located on the Sabine River at the border with Louisiana, and is from Houst ...
has indicated that ''Bambiraptor'' may have had mutually opposable first and third fingers and a forelimb maneuverability that would allow the hand to reach its mouth. This would have given the animal the ability to "hold" food in its front limbs and place it in its mouth, in a similar manner to some modern-day small mammals.
Brain
''Bambiraptor'' had a brain size in the lower range of modern bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...
s. Because of its enlarged cerebellum
The cerebellum (Latin for "little brain") is a major feature of the hindbrain of all vertebrates. Although usually smaller than the cerebrum, in some animals such as the mormyrid fishes it may be as large as or even larger. In humans, the cerebel ...
, which may indicate higher agility and higher intelligence than other dromaeosaurs, David A. Burnham has hypothesized that ''Bambiraptor feinbergi'' may have been arboreal. Life in the trees may have required evolutionary pressure that resulted in a larger brain. Burnham also offers an alternative hypothesis that a larger brain could be selected for as a result of hunting more agile prey items such as lizards and mammals. The ''Bambiraptor'' holotype had with 14 cm³ the largest brain for its size of any dinosaur yet discovered, although the brain size may be due to its age, because juvenile animals tend to have larger brain-to-body ratios compared to adults.
Feathers
During the conference where ''Bambiraptor'' was first introduced, the dinosaur reconstruction specialist Brian Cooley portrayed ''Bambiraptor'' as having feathers, despite the fact that no feathers were found with the fossil itself. His decision was influenced by the fact that because ''Bambiraptor'' within a cladistic
Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...
analysis was a member of a group, Paraves
Paraves are a widespread group of theropod dinosaurs that originated in the Middle Jurassic period. In addition to the extinct dromaeosaurids, troodontids, anchiornithids, and possibly the scansoriopterygids, the group also contains the avial ...
, that contained feathered true birds
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...
and that was the sister taxon of Oviraptorosauria
Oviraptorosaurs ("egg thief lizards") are a group of feathered maniraptoran dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period of what are now Asia and North America. They are distinct for their characteristically short, beaked, parrot-like skulls, with or wit ...
, a group that also had feathered forms (e.g. ''Caudipteryx''), ''Bambiraptor'' most likely had feathers too due to phylogenetic bracketing. Most paleontologists support Cooley's view, and subsequent discoveries confirmed that small dromaeosaurid dinosaurs like ''Bambiraptor'' were fully covered in feathers (see Dromaeosauridae
Dromaeosauridae () is a family of feathered theropod dinosaurs. They were generally small to medium-sized feathered carnivores that flourished in the Cretaceous Period. The name Dromaeosauridae means 'running lizards', from Greek ('), meaning ...
for more information).
Phylogeny
''Bambiraptor'' was assigned to the Dromaeosauridae
Dromaeosauridae () is a family of feathered theropod dinosaurs. They were generally small to medium-sized feathered carnivores that flourished in the Cretaceous Period. The name Dromaeosauridae means 'running lizards', from Greek ('), meaning ...
in 2000. Subsequent cladistic
Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...
analyses differ in the position of ''Bambiraptor'': it has been recovered in the Velociraptorinae
Velociraptorinae is a subfamily of the theropod group Dromaeosauridae. The earliest velociraptorines are probably ''Nuthetes'' from the United Kingdom, and possibly ''Deinonychus'' from North America. However, several indeterminate velociraptorin ...
, Microraptoria
Microraptoria (Greek, μίκρος, ''mīkros'': "small"; Latin, ''raptor'': "one who seizes") is a clade of basal dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaurs. The first microraptorians appeared 125 million years ago in China. Many are known for long feather ...
and most recently in the Saurornitholestinae
Saurornitholestinae is a subfamily of the theropod group Dromaeosauridae. The saurornitholestines currently include three monotypic genera: ''Atrociraptor marshalli'', ''Bambiraptor feinbergi'', and ''Saurornitholestes langstoni''. All are medium ...
.
See also
* Timeline of dromaeosaurid research
This timeline of dromaeosaurid research is a chronological listing of events in the history of paleontology focused on the dromaeosaurids, a group of sickle-clawed, bird-like theropod dinosaurs including animals like ''Velociraptor''. Since the ...
References
External links
Details of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History exhibit (page 8)
{{Taxonbar, from=Q134207
Late Cretaceous dinosaurs of North America
Eudromaeosaurs
Fossil taxa described in 2000
Taxa named by Philip J. Currie
Taxa named by Robert T. Bakker
Taxa named by John Ostrom
Paleontology in Montana
Campanian genus first appearances
Campanian genus extinctions