Published in Nature today

a Mongolian Late Cretaceous theropod that was rescued from the black market! It is supposed to be aquatic… but is it?

Halszkaraptor escuilliei (Cau et al. 2017; Late Cretaceous, Fig. 1) was originally considered an aquatic basal dromaeosaur related to Mahakala, but here Halszkaraptor nests with Shuvuuia, Haplocheirus and other non-aquatic sprinting dromaeosaurids. Manual digit 3 was the longest, but the thumb had the largest claw. The naris was displaced posteriorly. The fossil is preserved in 3D, largely articulated.

The Cau et al. cladogram

has many more bird-like theropods than the LRT. The taxa that nest together with Halszkaraptor in the LRT are sprinkled throughout the Cau et al. cladogram. In fact, all of the theropods that the two cladograms have in common nest in completely different nodes and leaves, except Haplocheirus nests in the same clade as Shuvuuia in both trees. Is this a case of taxon exclusion on the part of the LRT? Or just what happens when you score different traits? No reconstructions of sister taxa were provided.

Let’s look at the pertinent parts of the Cau et al. abstract:

“Propagation X-ray phase-contrast synchrotron microtomography of a well-preserved maniraptoran from Mongolia, still partially embedded in the rock matrix, revealed a mosaic of features, most of them absent among non-avian maniraptorans but shared by reptilian and avian groups with aquatic or semiaquatic ecologies.

“This new theropod, Halszkaraptor escuillieigen. et sp. nov., is related to other enigmatic Late Cretaceous maniraptorans from Mongolia in a novel clade at the root of Dromaeosauridae. This lineage adds an amphibious ecomorphology to those evolved by maniraptorans: it acquired a predatory mode that relied mainly on neck hyperelongation for food procurement, it coupled the obligatory bipedalism of theropods with forelimb proportions that may support a swimming function, and it developed postural adaptations convergent with short-tailed birds.”

What about this theropod screams, “I’m aquatic!!” ?? This is one I just don’t see.

In the LRT

Halszkaraptor does not nest with other aquatic taxa. The neck is not particularly long compared to coeval Mononykus (Fig. 2), which has never been considered aquatic. The skull is very much like that of coeval Shuvuuia.

Described in the press

“Like modern aquatic predators, this dinosaur’s face seems to have had an exquisite sense of touch, useful for finding prey in murky waters. Its small teeth would have helped it nab tiny fish, and its limber backbone and flipper-like forelimbs suggest that it cut through the water with ease.” as one of the oddest fossils yet found . This adjective usually gets attached to errors in identification . Halszkaraptor is not that odd. NatGeo reports,

This added later:

Apparently others have also seen the Shuvuuia connection. Author Andrea Cau listed 25 traits here that distinguish Halszkaraptor from Shuvuuia, but are found in dromaeosaurids. Perhaps this could all be cleared up easily, because in the LRT, Shuvuuia IS also a dromaeosaurid, not a distantly related theropod, as it nests in Cau et al. 2017.

More data added August 14, 2020.

Another post on Halszkaraptor from several years back

has been trashed following the correction made to the premaxilla/maxilla suture seen here (Fig. 2020.3). My mistake. All sisters have a shorter premaxilla with fewer teeth. However, that is not the pattern in Halszkaraptor, which has a longer premaxilla extending further beyond the naris. That change did not change the tree topology.

References

Cau A, et al. 2017. Synchrotron scanning reveals amphibious ecomorphology in a new clade of bird-like dinosaurs. Nature. doi:10.1038/nature24679

wiki/Halszkaraptor

wiki/Shuvuuia