Adasaurus
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| Adasaurus
Conservation status: Fossil | ||||||||||||||||
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| Adasaurus mongoliensis Richen Barsbold, 1983 |
Adasaurus (Ada Lizard) was a bird-like carnivorous dinosaur that lived 70 million years ago, during the late Cretaceous Period. (The name comes from the name of a mythological evil demon of Mongolia.) It has been described as being very similar to Archeopteryx and its discovery added fuel to the present debate concerning dinosaurs and birds. Only incomplete fossils have been found, all in Mongolia, but based mainly in the Gobi desert region.
At six feet (two meters) long and two feet (.7 meters) tall, normally about he size of a large dog , Adasaurus weighed only 33 pounds (15 kilograms) and may have had feathers. Like Velociraptor, it was bipedal with a large, sickle-like claw on each foot.
Aspects of the Adasaurus pelvis, which is very similar to that of ornithischians, lead some scientists to believe that it is actually more closely related to birds than to dinosaurs.
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