Received date: 2020-08-17
Online published: 2021-04-20
The recent finding of a fossil entombed in a Late Cretaceous amber - Oculudentavis khaungraae - was claimed to represent a humming bird-sized dinosaur. 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 the holotype of Oculudentavis khaungraae (HPG-15-3). Morphological evidences demonstrated here highly contradict the avian or even archosaurian phylogenetic placement of the species. In contrast, our analysis revealed multiple skull morphologies of HPG-15-3 resembling those of squamates, including pleurodont marginal teeth, an open infratemporal fenestra, and the presence of palatal dentition. Based on these new morphological information, the phylogenetic position of Oculudentavis was analyzed in a data matrix sampling across the Diapsida. Taxon sampling of the data matrix included multiple species of lizards, birds, and major clades in Lepidosauromorpha and Archosauromorpha. In the strict consensus tree, Oculudentavis is nested within Squamata. These results show that morphology of the Oculudentavis khaungraae holotype supports a squamate rather than avian or dinosaurian affinity of the species.
Key words： Burma; Cretaceous; bird; lizard; Diapsida; Squamata; Oculudentavis
LI Zhi-Heng, WANG Wei, HU Han, WANG Min, YI Hong-Yu, LU Jing . Reanalysis of Oculudentavis shows it is a lizard[J]. Vertebrata Palasiatica, 2021 , 59(2) : 95 -105 . DOI: 10.19615/j.cnki.1000-3118.201020
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