Bradycneme

Taxobox|
name = "Bradycneme"
fossil_range = Late Cretaceous (Maastrichtian)
regnum = Animalia
phylum = Chordata
classis = Sauropsida
superordo = Dinosauria
ordo = Saurischia
subordo = Theropoda
unranked_familia = Maniraptora
familia = Bradycnemidae
familia_authority = Harrison & Walker, 1975
genus = "Bradycneme"
genus_authority = Harrison & Walker, 1975
species = "B. draculae"
binomial = "Bradycneme draculae"
binomial_authority = 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.

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 owlHarrison & Walker (1975)] . The species name "draculae" is from Romanian "dracul", "evil one". 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 [Stoker (1897)] .

Starting with Pierce Brodkorb [Brodkorb (1978): pp.223-224] , 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 [Paul (1988), Weishampel "et al." (1991), Le Loeuff "et al." (1992), Csiki & Grigorescu (1998), Naish & Dyke (2004)] 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 [Csiki & Grigorescu (1998)] , but Darren Naish did not follow the synonymy and found "Heptasteornis" to be an alvarezsaurid [Naish & Dyke (2004)] . 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 [Mortimer (2004)] .

Footnotes

References

* (1978): Catalogue of fossil birds, Part 5 (Passeriformes). "Bulletin of the Florida State Museum, Biological Sciences" 23(3): 139-228.
* (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.
* (1975): The Bradycnemidae, a new family of owls from the Upper Cretaceous of Romania. "Palaeontology" 18(3): 563-570. [http://palaeontology.palass-pubs.org/pdf/Vol%2018/Pages%20563-570.pdf PDF fulltext]
* (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.
* (2004): The Theropod Database: [http://home.comcast.net/~eoraptor/Phylogeny%20of%20Taxa.html Phylogeny of taxa] . Retrieved 2008-AUG-14.
* (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.
* (1988): "Predatory Dinosaurs of the World." New York, Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-61946-2
* (1897): "Dracula".
* (1991): The dinosaurs of Transylvania. "National Geographic Research and Exploration" 7(2): 196-215. [http://bio.fsu.edu/~amarquez/Evolutionary%20Morphology%20fall%202004/Weishampel/1096-%20Weishampel%20et%20al%201991%20-%20Transylvania%20dinosaurs.pdf PDF fulltext]