Bradycneme
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| Bradycneme Fossil range: Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) |
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| Bradycneme draculae Harrison & Walker, 1975 |
Bradycneme was a genus of theropod dinosaur from the Maastrichtian-age Upper Cretaceous Sânpetru Formation of the Haţeg Basin, Transylvania, Romania. It is based on a distal right tibiotarsus (specimen BMNH A1588), which its describers believed came from an extinct family (Bradycnemidae) of giant owl.
[edit] History
Harrison and Walker described two "bradycnemids" from Romania in 1975: B. draculae and Heptasteornis andrewsi. These specimens had initially been assigned to the supposed pelecaniform bird Elopteryx nopcsai. Bradycneme means "ponderous leg", from Ancient Greek bradys (βραδύς) "slow, ponderous" + kneme (κνήμη) "leg", as the holotype would be very stout if the animal had been an owl[1]. The species name draculae is from Romanian dracul, "evil one"[1]. The fictional castle of the Transylvanian vampire Count Dracula, was placed by Bram Stoker some way north of the Haţeg Basin however, at Tihuţa Pass in Bistriţa-Năsăud County[2].
Starting with Pierce Brodkorb[3], the specimens were soon compared to small theropod dinosaurs. These three genera Bradycneme, Elopteryx and Heptasteornis have been synonymized, split, and reassessed numerous times since then[4] in part because of the fragmentary nature of the remains; there exist three proximal femora and three distal tibiotarsi, which may belong to one, two or three species. Usually, at least one of them is considered to be a troodontid.
In the most recent assessments, Bradycneme and Heptasteornis were found to be the same and most likely troodontids in one study[5], but Darren Naish did not follow the synonymy and found Heptasteornis to be an alvarezsaurid[6]. Cladistic analysis is not too well-suited to assess the placement of such a fragmentary fossil, and finds Bradycneme to be implaceable among Maniraptora, but probably different from Heptasteornis which seems to belong into the Mononykinae subfamily of alvarezsaurids[7].
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Brodkorb, Pierce (1978): Catalogue of fossil birds, Part 5 (Passeriformes). Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, Biological Sciences 23(3): 139-228.
- Csiki, G. & Grigorescu, D. (1998): Small theropods from the Late Cretaceous of the Hateg Basin (western Romania) - an unexpected diversity at the top of the food chain. Oryctos 1: 87-104.
- Harrison, Colin James Oliver & Walker, Cyril Alexander (1975): The Bradycnemidae, a new family of owls from the Upper Cretaceous of Romania. Palaeontology 18(3): 563-570. PDF fulltext
- Le Loeuff, J.; Buffetaut, E.; Méchin, P. & Méchin-Salessy, A. (1992): The first record of dromaeosaurid dinosaurs (Saurischia, Theropoda) in the Maastrichtian of southern Europe: palaeobiogeographical implications. Bulletin de la Société géologique de la France 163(3): 337-343.
- Mortimer, Michael (2004): The Theropod Database: Phylogeny of taxa. Retrieved 2007-NOV-04.
- Naish, Darren & Dyke, Gareth J. (2004): Heptasteornis was no ornithomimid, troodontid, dromaeosaurid or owl: the first alvarezsaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from Europe. Neues Jahrbuch für Geologie und Paläontologie Monatshefte 7: 385-401.
- Paul, Gregory S. (1988): Predatory Dinosaurs of the World. New York, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-61946-2
- Stoker, Bram (1897): Dracula.
- Weishampel, D.B.; Grigorescu, D. & Norman, D.B. (1991): The dinosaurs of Transylvania. National Geographic Research and Exploration 7(2): 196-215. PDF fulltext
