Ondogurvel alifanovi Averianov & Lopatin, 2022 (new genus and species)
(Type specimen of Ondogurvel alifanovi [scale bar = 50 mm], from Averianov and Lopatin, 2022)
Meaning of name: Ondogurvel = egg lizard; alifanovi = for Vladimir Alifanov [Russian paleontologist and discoverer of the original fossil, who passed away in 2021]
Age: Late Cretaceous (Campanian–Maastrichtian?)
Where found: Barun Goyot Formation, Ömnögovi, Mongolia
How much is known: Partial skeleton of one individual, including some vertebrae and parts of the limbs.
Notes: Ondogurvel was an alvarezsaurid, a group of unusual, small-bodied theropods with short but powerful forelimbs, each tipped with an enlarged thumb claw. Their other fingers were highly reduced (and in some cases apparently lost entirely).
Many alvarezsaurids have been described from the Late Cretaceous of Asia, but Ondogurvel can be distinguished from the others by several features, notably the fact that two of its metatarsals in each foot were fused together across most of their length. (In other alvarezsaurids, the metatarsals were either unfused or only fused to a limited extent.) It was probably fairly closely related to Mononykus, sharing with it a distinctive hand structure in which the reduced fingers were probably oriented at almost right angles from the thumb (instead of being roughly parallel to it).
Reference: Averianov, A.O. and A.V. Lopatin. 2022. A new alvarezsaurid theropod dinosaur from the Upper Cretaceous of Gobi Desert, Mongolia. Cretaceous Research advance online publication. doi: 10.1016/j.cretres.2022.105168
