Outline: a typical theropod
Bonapartenykus
"Bonaparte's claw"
- Lived
- 72 to 66 million years ago, Late Cretaceous
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Group
- Theropods
- Found in
- Argentina
- Named by
- Agnolin et al. 2012
Where its fossils were found
The evidence
Today
70 million years ago
Field notes
About Bonapartenykus
What it was like
Bonapartenykus was one of the largest alvarezsaurs, a group of small theropods with short, strong arms. It is known from part of a skeleton that was found with eggs, which may have been its own.
Its world
It lived about 72 to 66 million years ago, near the end of the Cretaceous, in what is now Argentina. It comes from the Allen Formation, where it shared the land with the long-snouted hunter Austroraptor, the abelisaur Abelisaurus and the titanosaurs Aeolosaurus and Neuquensaurus.
How it was found
Agnolin and colleagues named Bonapartenykus in 2012, after a leading Argentine paleontologist.
Lived alongside
Found in the same rock formations
Close relatives
Other members of Alvarezsauroidea
Sources: WikidataNamed in: F. L. Agnolin, J. E. Powell, and F. E. Novas, M. Kundrát. 2012. New alvarezsaurid (Dinosauria, Theropoda) from uppermost Cretaceous of north-western Patagonia with associated eggs. Cretaceous Research 35(1):33-56