''Rinchenia'' (named after Byambyn Rinchen) is a

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of oviraptorid

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic Geological period, period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the #Evolutio ...

that lived in

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

during the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the more recent of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''cre ...

epoch in what is now

Mongolia Mongolia is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south and southeast. It covers an area of , with a population of 3.5 million, making it the world's List of countries and dependencies by po ...

Nemegt Formation The Nemegt Formation (also known as Nemegtskaya Svita) is a geological formation in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia, dating to the Late Cretaceous. The formation consists of river channel sediments and contains fossils of fish, turtles, crocodilians ...

, around 70 million years ago. The

type Type may refer to: Science and technology Computing * Typing, producing text via a keyboard, typewriter, etc. * Data type, collection of values used for computations. * File type * TYPE (DOS command), a command to display contents of a file. * ...

and only known species, ''Rinchenia mongoliensis'', was originally classified as a species within the genus ''

Oviraptor ''Oviraptor'' (; ) is a genus of oviraptorid dinosaur that lived in Asia during the Late Cretaceous period. The first remains were collected from the Djadokhta Formation of Mongolia in 1923 during a paleontological expedition led by Roy Chapman ...

'' (named ''Oviraptor mongoliensis''), but a subsequent reexamination found differences significant enough to warrant a separate genus. The name ''Rinchenia'' was coined for this new genus, though not formally described in detail.

History of discovery

During 1984, a nearly complete oviraptorid skeleton was discovered at the Altan Uul II (or Altan Ula II) locality of the highly fossiliferous

Gobi Desert The Gobi Desert (, , ; ) is a large, cold desert and grassland region in North China and southern Mongolia. It is the sixth-largest desert in the world. The name of the desert comes from the Mongolian word ''gobi'', used to refer to all of th ...

. This newly collected specimen, MPC-D 100/32-A, included the skull and lower jaws in their entirety, nearly complete vertebral column, forelimbs with shoulder girdle, and partial hindlimbs with pelvic girdle. Later on,

n paleontologist Rinchen Barsbold in 1986 used the specimen to erect and describe a new species of ''

'': ''Oviraptor mongoliensis''. Barsbold in 1997 assigned a new genus for the specimen, namely ''Rinchenia''. Although concluding that it was distinctly different from ''Oviraptor'' in both skull and skeleton characters, Barsbold did not include a formal diagnosis for this new taxon. Halszka Osmólska with colleagues in 2004 during their large revision of several dinosaur clades preferred the combination ''R. mongoliensis'' over the previously named ''O. mongoliensis'', also regarding the latter as a synonym. In 2018, Gregory F. Funston and team conducted a comprehensive revision of the at-the-time known oviraptorosaur taxa across the

Barun Goyot Formation The Baruungoyot Formation (also known as Barun Goyot) is a geological formation dating to the Late Cretaceous Period. It is located within and is widely represented in the Gobi Desert Basin, in the Ömnögovi Province of Mongolia. Descriptio ...

and Nemegt Formation, where they formally described, photographed, and diagnosed ''Rinchenia'' based on the assigned

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

MPC-D 100/32-A. The team also stated that even though the locality of the holotype is known, the exact site of discovery and horizon remains unknown. Funston in his 2019 master thesis described in extensive detail the holotype of ''Rinchenia'', along with other oviraptorids, where he provided additional data regarding the name of the taxon. The generic name, ''Rinchenia'', is in honor of Byambyn Rinchen, veteran

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...

and father of Barsbold. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

, ''mongoliensis'', refers to the country where the holotype was found: Mongolia.

Description

''Rinchenia'' was a small-sized oviraptorid, estimated at and a body mass of about . Several features of its skeleton, especially in the skull, show it to be distinct from ''Oviraptor''. Its skeleton was more lightly built and less robust than that of ''Oviraptor'', and while the crest of ''Oviraptor'' is indistinct because of poor fossil preservation, ''Rinchenia'' had a well-preserved, highly developed,

cassowary Cassowaries (; Biak: ''man suar'' ; ; Papuan: ''kasu weri'' ) are flightless birds of the genus ''Casuarius'', in the order Casuariiformes. They are classified as ratites, flightless birds without a keel on their sternum bones. Cassowaries a ...

-like casque/dome which incorporated many bones in the skull that are free of the crest in ''Oviraptor''.

References

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q133177 Oviraptoridae Dinosaur genera Maastrichtian dinosaurs Nemegt Formation Taxa named by Rinchen Barsbold Fossil taxa described in 1997 Dinosaurs of Mongolia

History of discovery

Description

See also

References

External links