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6 February 2015 New Elmisaurine Specimens from North America and Their Relationship to the Mongolian Elmisaurus rarus
Gregory F. Funston, Philip J. Currie, Michael E. Burns
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Abstract

New specimens from Canada confirm the presence of elmisaurines in North America and shed light on the relationship of Leptorhynchos elegans to Mongolian forms. These specimens have hindlimb elements previously unknown from elmisaurines in the Dinosaur Park Formation, including tibiae and pedal phalanges. Metatarsal anatomy is sufficiently different to merit a generic distinction from Elmisaurus rarus, and both can be distinguished from Caenagnathus collinsi and Chirostenotes pergracilis. Differences between these taxa include body size, degree of coossification of the tarsometatarsus, and development of cruciate ridges of the metatarsal III. Histological analysis confirms that these differences are not correlated with ontogenetic age of the specimens. The results support the informal separation of caenagnathids based on metatarsal structure, and allow comments on paleobiological differences between caenagnathids and oviraptorids.

© 2016 G.F. Funston et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (for details please see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Gregory F. Funston, Philip J. Currie, and Michael E. Burns "New Elmisaurine Specimens from North America and Their Relationship to the Mongolian Elmisaurus rarus," Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 61(1), 159-173, (6 February 2015). https://doi.org/10.4202/app.00129.2014
Received: 6 October 2014; Accepted: 1 January 2015; Published: 6 February 2015
KEYWORDS
Caenagnathidae
Campanian
Canada
Dinosauria
Elmisaurinae
Maastrichtian
Montana
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