Open Paleo

Caenagnathoidea

Sternberg, 1940 Type genus Caenagnathus

Its genera lived 121.4–66.0 million years ago Early Cretaceous–Late Cretaceous
Early Cretaceous and Late Cretaceous stages

Caenagnathoidea is a superfamily of advanced oviraptorosaurs, the feathered, beaked maniraptoran dinosaurs of the Cretaceous Period. It groups the two principal families of that lineage, Caenagnathidae and Oviraptoridae, together with their most recent common ancestor. Its members lived across what are now Asia and North America and share the short, deep, parrot-like skulls typical of oviraptorosaurs, but in a more specialized form: the jaws are entirely toothless and sheathed in a horny beak, and the skull and palate are extensively hollowed by air spaces. The group unites the often crested oviraptorids, best known from Asia, with the toothless, frequently long-legged caenagnathids of both Asia and North America. It is a stable and widely used grouping, standing just apart from close relatives such as the similarly beakless Avimimus, which falls outside it.

Diagnosis

  1. Fully edentulous jaws sheathed in a keratinous rhamphotheca
  2. Deep, foreshortened skull with a secondarily pneumatized palate
  3. Dentary with an elongate symphysis bearing lingual occlusal ridges
  4. Mandibular articular facet for the quadrate formed almost entirely by the articular

Clades within Caenagnathoidea

References

  1. Sternberg, R. M. (1940). A toothless bird from the Cretaceous of Alberta. Journal of Paleontology 14(1): 81-85.

    Named the family Caenagnathidae, from which the superfamily Caenagnathoidea takes its authorship by coordination.

    sternberg1940a
  2. Osmólska, H.; Currie, P. J.; Barsbold, R. (2004). Oviraptorosauria. The Dinosauria, Second Edition (Weishampel, D. B.; Dodson, P.; Osmólska, H., eds.) 165-183. University of California Press, Berkeley. doi:10.1525/california/9780520242098.003.0010

    Diagnosed Caenagnathoidea by unambiguous synapomorphies, under the definition of Maryańska and colleagues (2002).

    osmólska2004a
  3. Maryańska, T.; Osmólska, H.; Wolsan, M. (2002). Avialan status for Oviraptorosauria. Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 47(1): 97-116.

    Defined the clade, under the name Oviraptoroidea, as the least inclusive clade containing Oviraptor philoceratops and Caenagnathus collinsi.

    maryańska2002a
  4. Lamanna, M. C.; Sues, H. D.; Schachner, E. R.; Lyson, T. R. (2014). A new large-bodied oviraptorosaurian theropod dinosaur from the latest Cretaceous of western North America. PLoS ONE 9(3): e92022. Public Library of Science (PLoS). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0092022

    Recovered Caenagnathoidea in the analysis describing Anzu, listing its synapomorphies.

    lamanna2014a