Tyrannoraptora is a clade defined as "all descendants of the

last common ancestor In biology and genetic genealogy, the most recent common ancestor (MRCA), also known as the last common ancestor (LCA) or concestor, of a set of organisms is the most recent individual from which all the organisms of the set are descended. The ...

of ''

Tyrannosaurus rex ''Tyrannosaurus'' is a genus of large theropod dinosaur. The species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' (''rex'' meaning "king" in Latin), often called ''T. rex'' or colloquially ''T-Rex'', is one of the best represented theropods. ''Tyrannosaurus'' live ...

'' and ''

Passer domesticus The house sparrow (''Passer domesticus'') is a bird of the sparrow family Passeridae, found in most parts of the world. It is a small bird that has a typical length of and a mass of . Females and young birds are coloured pale brown and grey, an ...

'' (the house sparrow)". The clade was named in 1999 by the

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

Paul Sereno Paul Callistus Sereno (born October 11, 1957) is a professor of paleontology at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic "explorer-in-residence" who has discovered several new dinosaur species on several continents, including at sites ...

, though in his original concept had

Tyrannosauroidea Tyrannosauroidea (meaning 'tyrant lizard forms') is a superfamily (or clade) of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs that includes the family Tyrannosauridae as well as more basal relatives. Tyrannosauroids lived on the Laurasian supercontinent b ...

being the sister taxon to

Pennaraptora Pennaraptora (Latin ''penna'' "bird feather" + ''raptor'' "thief", from ''rapere'' "snatch"; a feathered bird-like predator) is a clade defined as the most recent common ancestor of ''Oviraptor philoceratops'', ''Deinonychus antirrhopus'', and '' ...

(which in Serenos paper was synonyms with Maniraptora as Therizinosaurs were thought to be more closely related to Ornithomimosaurs and the term Pennaraptora had not been coined as yet). Phylogenetic analyses have since, however, found the group also encompasses

Compsognathidae Compsognathidae is a family of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs. Compsognathids were small carnivores, generally conservative in form, hailing from the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods. The bird-like features of these species, along with other d ...

Ornithomimosauria Ornithomimosauria ("bird-mimic lizards") are theropod dinosaurs which bore a superficial resemblance to the modern-day ostrich. They were fast, omnivorous or herbivorous dinosaurs from the Cretaceous Period (geology), Period of Laurasia (now Asia ...

Alvarezsauroidea Alvarezsauroidea is a group of small maniraptoran dinosaurs. Alvarezsauroidea, Alvarezsauridae, and Alvarezsauria are named for the historian Gregorio Álvarez, not the more familiar physicist Luis Alvarez, or his son geologist Walter Alvarez ...

, and

Therizinosauria Therizinosaurs (once called segnosaurs) were large herbivorous theropod dinosaurs whose fossils have been found across the Early to Late Cretaceous deposits in Asia and North America. Various features of the forelimbs, skull and pelvis unite the ...

. Thus tyrannoraptorans are divided into tyrannosauroids and maniraptoromorphs. The cladogram below shows Sereno's original concept for Tyrannoraptora. The Cladogram below shows the modern interpretation of Tyrannoraptora.

References

Late Jurassic dinosaurs Cretaceous dinosaurs Cenozoic dinosaurs Extant Middle Jurassic first appearances Taxa named by Paul Sereno {{Theropod-stub