Velociraptor mongoliensis Osborn, 1924

Nesbitt, Sterling J., 2011, The Early Evolution Of Archosaurs: Relationships And The Origin Of Major Clades, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (352), pp. 1-292 : 56-57

Velociraptor mongoliensis Osborn, 1924

AGE: Campanian, Late Cretaceous ( Kielan-Jaworowska and Hurum, 1997).

OCCURRENCE: Djadokhta Formation, Mongolia and China.

HOLOTYPE: AMNH 6515, skull manual digit I.

REFERRED MATERIAL: IGM 100/24, complete skull and a few postcranial elements; IGM 100/25, complete skeleton; IGM 100/ 976, partial skeleton with a fragmentary skull and partial postcranium; IGM 100/986, fragmentary skeleton consisting of cranial and postcranial fragments; IGM 100/982, nearly completely preserved skeleton.

REMARKS: Velociraptor is one of the bestunderstood maniraptoran theropods from the Cretaceous. It is known from complete skulls and skeletons. Velociraptor has been used in many phylogenetic analyses examining the relationships of theropods (e.g., TWiG; Turner et al., 2007) and has been critical to understanding the theropod-bird link ( Padian and Chiappe, 1998). Barsbold and Osmólska (1999) present a thorough diagnosis of Velociraptor based on the skull.

KEY REFERENCES: Osborn, 1924; Norell and Makovicky, 1997, 1999; Barsbold and Osmólska, 1999.