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HULSANPES
(hul-san-pees)
meaning: "Hulsan foot"
Named By: H. Osmolska in 1982
Time Period: Late Cretaceous, 70 Ma
Location: Mongolia - Barun Goyot Formation
Size: Unknown due to lack of remains
Diet: Unknown
Fossil(s): Partial foot
Classification: | Chordata | Reptilia | Dinosauria | Saurischia | Theropoda | Euornithes |
About

Hulsanpes is a genus of eumaniraptoran theropod dinosaurs from the Late Cretaceous of Mongolia.

The fossil remains of Hulsanpes were found in 1970 by a Polish-Mongolian expedition to the Gobi Desert at Khulsan, Omnogovi Province.

The type species, Hulsanpes perlei, was named and described by Halszka Osmolska in 1982. The generic name means "foot from Khulsan", from the Latinized name of the type locality (Hulsan) + Latin pes, "foot". The specific name honors the Mongolian paleontologist Altangerel Perle.

Hulsanpes is based on holotype ZPAL MgD-I/173, uncovered in a layer of the Barun Goyot Formation, dating from the late Campanian (roughly 73 mya). It consist of a partial right foot and a braincase fragment from an apparently immature individual. It contains the second, third and fourth metatarsal and the first and partial second phalanx of the second toe. The longest bone, the third metatarsal, has a length of thirty-nine millimetres.

Osmolska in 1982 placed Hulsanpes in the Dromaeosauridae. Several features of the fossil were according to Osmolska too "primitive" for it to be a genuine bird, such as the lack of fusion of the metatarsals except in the distal region but this might partly be due to the young age of the individual. Although its juvenile nature is reminiscent of a miniature Velociraptor mongoliensis, and though these traits are plesiomorphic, it might still belong to another, non-avian, maniraptoran lineage besides Dromaeosauridae. A 2004 phylogeny of Dromaeosauridae recovered Hulsanpes as a dromaeosaurid (due to a coding error for Sinovenator), but Agnolin and Novas (2013) assign it to Averaptora incertae sedis based on the fact that the extremely gracile metatarsals are similar to Avialae and metatarsal III is proximally pinched.

Read more about Hulsanpes at Wikipedia
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