Hesperonychus Traditional Cache
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Hesperonychus (meaning "west claw") was a genus of small, carnivorous dromaeosaurid dinosaur. There is one described species, Hesperonychus elizabethae; the type species was named in honor of the woman who collected it in 1982. It is known from fossils recovered from the Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta, dating to the late Cretaceous Period (Campanian stage) about 75 million years ago).
Hesperonychus is known from one partial pelvic girdle, collected by Dr. Elizabeth Nicholls in Dinosaur Provincial Park in 1982. The fossils remained undescribed, however, until Nick Longrich and Phil Currie published on them in 2009. A number of very small finger and toe bones, as well as claws, in the collection of the Royal Tyrrell Museum may also belong to Hesperonychus. Despite their small size, the pubic bones were fused, a characteristic of adult dinosaurs, indicating that the specimen does not represent a juvenile.
Though known from only partial remains, Longrich and Currie estimated its total length at under 1 meter and weight at about 1.9 kilograms, making it the smallest known carnivorous dinosaur from North America. The alvarezsaurid Albertonykus was smaller, though likely an insectivore rather than a carnivore.
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