BAMBI THE BABY DINOSAUR

[Tetanurae@aol.com]

So much talk, so little time to respond.....  Recently, many posters have 
asked the question, what the heck is "Bambiraptor"?  I am pretty certain this 
is the same thing that has been discussed on and off the list for the better 
part of three years.

Go check the archives for a post I sent out in October of 1996 (yikes) using 
the absurdly cumbersome email address gpb6845@msu.oscs.montana.edu

This is also the same darn animal I nicknamed "Linsterosaurus" sometime over 
the last three years.  The Linster family call the specimen "Bambi" hence 
"Bambiraptor."  For those of you who are new, or those of you who have just 
been oblivious since 1994 (and god knows you'd have good reason), here are 
some neat bits of info about the animal:

It is really really really tiny.....  if you can imagine a pigeon, you have 
the right size range.  It also has extraordinarily long arms for a non-flying 
theropod.  There is a sizable sickle claw on the foot.  There is a nice 
boomerang shaped wishbone reminiscent of those in Archaeopteryx, oviraptors 
and Velociraptor.

What is "Linsterosaurus?"  Good question.  It is being provisionally assigned 
to "Velociraptor sp," but will be described soon.  I personally do not 
believe that it is Velociraptor or Saurornitholestes, but the question can 
only be resolved when we really gosh darn find out WHAT Velociraptor and 
Saurornitholestes looked like.  Our "old" ideas are being changed rapidly by 
new material from Asia and North America.

It does seem to have a lot of similarities to Unenlagia, Rahonavis and 
Sinornithosaurus, but these could end up being juvenile dromaeosaur features. 
 It becomes tricky when you try to differentiate members of two sister 
clades, when one of which is basically a paedomorphic version of the 
other.....

Peter Buchholz
Tetanurae@aol.com