RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Is <em>Oculudentavis</em> a bird or even archosaur?
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.03.16.993949
DO 10.1101/2020.03.16.993949
A1 Zhiheng Li
A1 Wei Wang
A1 Han Hu
A1 Min Wang
A1 Hongyu Yi
A1 Jing Lu
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/03/19/2020.03.16.993949.1.abstract
AB Recent finding of a fossil – Oculudentavis khaungraae Xing et al. 2020, entombed in a Late Cretaceous amber – was claimed to represent a humming bird-sized dinosaur1. Regardless of the intriguing evolutionary hypotheses about the bauplan of Mesozoic dinosaurs (including birds) posited therein, this enigmatic animal demonstrates various morphologies resembling lizards. If Oculudentavis was a bird, it challenges several fundamental morphological differences between Lepidosauria and Archosauria. Here we reanalyze the original computed tomography scan data of Oculudentavis. Morphological evidences demonstrated here highly contradict the avian or even archosaurian phylogenetic placement of Oculudentavis. In contrast, our analysis revealed multiple synapomorphies of the Squamata in this taxon, including pleurodont marginal teeth and an open infratemporal fenestra, which suggests a squamate rather than avian or dinosaurian affinity of Oculudentavis (Figs. 1 and 2).