Qiupalong (IPA: /ˌtɕʰuˈpaːloŋ/; Chinese: 秋扒龙; pinyin: Qiūpálóng; lit. 'dragon from the Qiupa Formation') is an extinct genus of ornithomimosaurian theropod that was discovered in the Late Cretaceous Qiupa Formation of Henan, China. The genus contains a single species, Q. henanensis, the specific epithet for which was named for the province of Henan. Uniquely, Qiupalong is one of the few Late Cretaceous non-avian dinosaurs known from both Asia and Laramidia. A specimen from Alberta has been referred to the genus without being assigned to the type species or suggested to be similar to it. A fossil of an ornithomimid similar to Qiupalong has also been described from Russian Far East.
Discovery
The Qiupa Formation is located in the Tantou Basin which is in Luanchuan County of the Henan province in China. Lithological correlation of the local strata has dated the Qiupa Formation to the Late Cretaceous. More specific analyses have suggested that the formation dates to the end of the Maastrichtian stage, which was the final stage of the Mesozoic Era. This would make Qiupalong and its contemporaries were among the last-surviving non-avian dinosaurs. The Qiupa Formation preserves a wide variety of dinosaur eggs, many of which have been named as ootaxa, as well as body fossils. Qiupalong was the first ornithomimosaur to be discovered in the area, and when it was described, it added to the known diversity of Asian ornithomimosaurs of the Late Cretaceous. It was described in 2011 by a team of scientists from various institutions in China, South Korea, Japan, and Canada which included Li Xu, Yoshitsugu Kobayashi, Junchang Lü, Yuong-Nam Lee, Yongqing Liu, Kohei Tanaka, Xingliao Zhang, Songhai Jia, and Jiming Zhang. The holotype consists of a partial postcranial skeleton and is housed in the Henan Geological Museum and was given the designation HGM 41HIII-0106.
In 2017, another team of researchers including Philip J. Currie, described some postcranial ornithomimid remains from the Belly River Group in Alberta, Canada. These included the specimens UALVP 53595 and UALVP 52861 from the Dinosaur Park Formation and CMN 8902. The latter specimen was discovered in 1921 before the delineation between the Dinosaur Park and Oldman formations was erected, and the precise locality from which it was collected is not certain. Therefore, the specimen's precise age is also uncertain. When these newer specimens were described, the authors noted that they bore significant morphological similarities to the holotype of Qiupalong. The foot claws of the new specimens in particular were nearly identical to those of the holotype. As a result, they referred these new remains to the genus, but they did not assign it to the type species. The significance of this referral was noted by the authors. It extended the temporal range of Qiupalong from the middle Campanian to the latest Maastrichtian - a span of roughly 10 million years. This would also make Qiupalong the only genus of ornithomimid known from both Asia and Laramidia. In 2023, the tibia of a juvenile ornithomimosaur from the Udurchukan Formation of the Amur Oblast in the Russian Far East was described by Alexander Averianov and colleagues. The tibia is believed to be from the end of the Maastrichtian, and the authors noted that its morphology was very similar to Qiupalong. It was also found in a region of Russia that preserves hadrosaurs of North American affinities. They hypothesized that it was from an animal very similar to Qiupalong which may have participated in a faunal dispersal from North America to Asia. However, Averianov and colleagues did not refer the remains to any specific genus within Ornithomimidae.
Description
Qiupalong was very similar to derived North American ornithomimosaurs like Ornithomimus and Struthiomimus. Xu and colleagues gave lengths for the pubis, tibia, and metatarsals as 320 millimetres (13 in), 384 millimetres (15.1 in), and 233 millimetres (9.2 in) respectively. They did not give an estimate for the animal's overall size, but Rubén Molina-Pérez and Asier Larramendi suggested a length of 2.85 metres (9.4 ft) and a mass of 63 kilograms (139 lb). Xu and colleagues diagnosed the genus by the following apomorphies: a notch on the medial posterior process of the tibia, a small pit near the articular surface between the astragalus and calcaneum, a short anterior extension of the pubic boot, an arctometatarsalian condition of the third metatarsal, a straight pubic shaft, and a wide angle between the pubic shaft and boot. Some of these are autapomorphies, while others are plesiomorphic characteristics or synapomorphic traits shared with other ornithomimids.
Holotype
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