| Alvarezsaurs Temporal range: Late Jurassic-Late Cretaceous, 160–65.5 Ma |
|
|---|---|
| Reconstructed skeleton of a Mononykus olecranus | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Superorder: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Theropoda |
| Branch: | †Alvarezsauria Bonaparte, 1991 |
| Superfamily: | †Alvarezsauroidea Bonaparte, 1991 |
| Type species | |
| Alvarezsaurus calvoi Bonaparte, 1991 |
|
| Subgroups | |
Alvarezsauroidea is a group of small maniraptoran dinosaurs. Alvarezsauroidea, Alvaresauridae, and Alvarezsauria are named for the historian Don Gregorio Alvarez, not the more familiar physicist Luis Alvarez, who proposed that the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event was caused by an impact event. The group was first formally proposed by Choiniere and colleagues in 2010, to contain the family Alvarezsauridae and non-alvarezsaurid alvarezsauroids, namely Haplocheirus.[1]