Outline: a typical theropod
Bannykus
"half claw"
- Lived
- 121 to 113 million years ago, Early Cretaceous
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Group
- Theropods
- Found in
- China
- Named by
- Xu et al. 2018
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
115 million years ago
Field notes
About Bannykus
What it was like
Bannykus was an alvarezsaur, a bird-like dinosaur. Its arms were shorter than those of early members of its group but longer than later ones, and its thumb was large, a halfway stage toward the single-clawed hands of later species.
Its world
It lived in the Early Cretaceous in what is now northern China. Its bones come from the Bayangobi Formation, where the early therizinosaur Alxasaurus and the small horned Psittacosaurus also lived.
How it was found
Xu and colleagues named it in 2018.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Alvarezsauroidea
Sources: WikidataNamed in: X. Xu, J. Choiniere, and Q.-W. Tan, R. B. J. Benson, J. Clark, C. Sullivan, Q. Zhao, F.-L. Han, Q.-Y. Ma, Y.-M. He, S. Wang, H. Xing, L. Tan. 2018. Two early Cretaceous fossils document transitional stages in alvarezsaurian dinosaur evolution. Current Biology 28:2853-2860