#scansoriopterygids

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

for the purposes of having multiple options for the poll, I am assuming dinosaurs evolved powered flight three times. this may be incorrect, but it hasn't been proven wrong yet, so...

[fishsfailureson]

Day 28 - Yi qi

Weird little guy

Prompts

[fundinofactoftheday]

Dinofact #76

Dinovember day 9: Yi qi

Yi, a genus of scansoriopterygid dinosaur, has the shortest generic name of any dinosaur, containing only two letters. The specific name, Yi qi, is the shortest possible under the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature, with four letters. This distinction is shared with Ia io, a species of bat.

Source: Wikipedia

[percivalias]

The Maniraptoran Alphabet (Part 4)

Part 4 of my dinosaur alphabet! I'll admit Yi qi for Q is the most questionable of the letters, given that it's the only one picked for species name rather than genus name. Unfortunately, though, the only genera I could find that fit my requirements (maniraptorans extinct before the Eocene) were things described in only 1 or 2 papers and had no pre-existing restorations to reference, so I would've had to make restorations for them whole cloth, and I just didn't have the time for that on this project (though maybe I will some other time?). So Yi qi was moved from Y to Q and I picked a different species for Y. (The other thing I was considering was throwing Quetzalcoatlus in there as a curveball, since it's not even a dinosaur muchtheless a maniraptoran, but that probably would have been a joke only for me.)

[dinofigureoftheday]

Dino figure of the day: Kaiyodo Yi qi

[he-who-needs-to-be-silenced]

Scansoriopteryx is itchy

[fastman27]

Yi qi.

[the-lily-orchard]

A dinosaur that reminds me a lot of the cockatrice. Enjoy the info!

[yiqi-fr]

Hi dropping in just to say I really really love your art!! It's so gorgeous!! And your url is a banger, Yi is one of my favorite dinosaurs :D

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it! I've loved yi for a while, it was one of the dinos that I put as a top 5 in a letter to my future self like almost a decade ago so I guess it's stood as one of my favorite dinos for a while now lol. Such a neat animal, cool to see other fans of somewhat niche dinos :3

[aurumdrake]

Smaugust Circle Day 4 - Plausible

A speculative scansoriopterygid descendant. While they lack the firebreatg of dragons of legend, they make up for it in their fiery plumage.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

#man did a megalosaurus and iguanadon fuck?#or is it like all the ones decended from either one are counted in the same group?#where did they evolve from?#is the term dinosaur like the term “fish” where its all weird?#but i do think dragons decended from the megalosaurus and the iguanadon#or at least certain kinds of dragons#perhaps without the mass extiction event that fuckin merked the dinos we couda got ourselves a dragon#but would there be humans?#i have so many questions

@moonboy-queerfingers moving to a new post but

It's not that Megalosaurus and Iguanodon fucked (they were millions of years apart)

It's that they were the first two dinosaurs discovered

SO we defined the group as *their family tree*, which means that the first dinosaur was the last ancestor they shared

so like, think about a family group of humans. you have distant cousins with your last name, because a few generations ago, your most recent common ancestor with said cousins had that last name.

"Dinosaur" is just that for species.

Fish is weird for many, many reasons, some are similar, but it's a whole other ball game. Essentially, all tetrapods (amphibians, reptiles+birds, mammals) evolved from fish, but weren't included in fish when we just classified things on traits. So, by evolutionary relationship, tetrapods are fish, but that's never what people mean when they say fish, so scientists don't know what to do. I personally vote we call tetrapods fish because a lot of our anatomy is directly because we are fish.

And we did actually have dragons among dinosaurs ! They're called Scansoriopterygids and they were small, but very much dragon like:

[fluffyyutyrannus]

-RODAN-

A species of Scansoriopterygid kaiju, they were mutated by a radon leak in the mine they lived in, eventually making them break out as their size rapidly grew, 3 Rodans are known as of right now: a female, her mate and their chick, all nesting near El Chichón, Mexico.

Here the Male, Female and (low res) baby on their own in case you wanted to see them

[smorgasvoid]

The Sky's the Limit: Wyverns of Chortis

On Chortis, there are six groups of what we would call wyverns, which are a polyphyletic assemblage of various sarcopterygians.

Due to the high energy demands of flight, most wyverns are carnivorous (when they do eat plants, it is usually fruit). The exception is the elephant wyverns, which are flightless herbivores.

The following groups are listed in the order they were drawn:

• The first group of wyverns are the elephant wyverns (Clade Pachydermoptera), named due to their prehensile trunks and generally large size. This group includes the heaviest wyvern that ever lived, containing herbivorous and omnivorous taxa. They are also the smallest group of wyverns. When they were first discovered by European settlers that entered the magic portals, they were thought to be a type of monotreme. Then, analysis of their morphology showed that they were an aberrant clade of trionychian turtles (yes, you read that correctly).

The ancestral shell has atrophied, being reduced to rib-like components. Despite their forelimbs resembling wings, they did not evolve from flying animals, rather their ancestor possessed wing-like flippers. They physically can't fly due to their wings being too dense and the fact that they lack the adaptations seen in flying vertebrates. Nowadays, extant taxa use them for balance, intimidation, display, swimming, or quadrupedal locomotion.

• The second are the more common saurian wyverns (Clade Vernosauria), a group of primarily carnivorous winged saurischian dinosaurs that can be divided into quadrupedal and bipedal taxa. They were formerly thought to be closely related to the ichthyosaur-like dyptosaurs but they are now believed to be descended from a Pampadromaeus-like taxon, making them a bit closer to true sauropods. This group includes the highest number of wyvern species. Interestingly, most saurian wyverns are venomous. They may or may not have proto-feathers, depending on the vernosaur family.

• Then there are the bird wyverns (Clade Coccatraciformes (And yes I'm using Monster Hunter terminology) which aren't birds in the strict sense but an offshoot of the scansoriopterygids. Like the Yi+Ambopteryx clade and unlike the majority of maniraptorans, they have bat-like membranous wings supported by 3 digits and a styliform wristbone. Unlike their predecessors, many bird wyverns can fly. They are split into two groups, the Aviteratosauria (bird monster lizards), which are more reptilian in their physiology and then there are the Paratornithes, which are more bird-like in their physiology.

•Vintage wyverns (Clade Opisthoptera), named such due to their resemblance to Terran heraldic wyverns, are a clade of winged archosauromorphs descended from a member of the Sharovipteryx+Ozimek clade. Most vintage wyverns are raptorial predators, though waders, skimmers, scavengers, ovivores, and granivores are present. Unlike most wyverns, they possess wings derives from their hindlimbs, being sharovipterygians.

• The frog wyverns, also known as elf wyverns (Clade Elfinoptera) are a clade of volant temnospondyls nested in the Dissorophoidea, making them a sister group to Lissamphibia, which includes actual frogs. They are heterothermic, with their metabolism changing depending on factors such as their environment and the availability of food and water. The "elf" part is in part due to the ear-like protrusions of the lower jaw.

Many but not all taxa have a ballistic tongue, which aids in feeding.

• The last and oldest group, the piscine wyverns (clade Volanichthyes, more MH terminology for you). Strangely, unlike most wyverns, piscine wyverns are not tetrapods, let alone tetrapodomorphs. Instead, they are closely related to lungfish (being dipnomorphs, specifically porolepiforms) yet have converged with early tetrapods. While adults are terrestrial or semiaquatic, all volanichthyans (with the exception of mouthbrooders) must return to water to lay their eggs.

Based on an interpretation of the ocean flish by Fabio Alejandro/Dragonthunders as a different clade of lobe-finned fish. Subsequent piscine wyvern designs will be more "fishy", since this is just a generic example and not representative of any species native to Chortis (also too similar to tetrapods design-wise).

Extra notes: Saurian wyverns were the first type planned (since 2021), going through many phases, they were originally going to be an offshoot of varanoid lizards, then a clade of archosaurs endemic to an alternate Earth (before the idea for an exoplanet was thought of), then basal diapsids descended from araeoscelidids, then compsognathiforms (Compsognathidae is probably polyphyletic so it was changed to stem-tetrapods). Now, they are sauropodomorphs.

[etchif]

I can draw any non-avian dinosaur as long as it's a theropod that's also a maniraptoran and also a member of paraves except for scansoriopterygids those are kinda hard to get right also it should be vaguely bird-shaped as you can see my skills are near limitless

[palaeonecromancy]

Happy Fossil Friday!

Who: Yi qi

name meaning: "Wing" "Strange" = "Strange wing"

pronunciation: Yee chee

What: a scansoriopterygid (climbing/gliding maniraptoran dinosaurs) theropod

When: Middle-Upper Jurassic

Where: Tiaojishan Formation in the Hebei Province in China

Fun fact!: Yi qi is the shortest binomial of any extinct animal discovered so far, sharing this status (ironically) with the extant Ia io, the great evening bat.

P.F. (personal flex) Fun fact!: One of the authors on the original paper describing the discovery of Yi qi was my undergraduate thesis supervisor.

Why are they cool?: When you think of birds you think feathers and Yi qi certain had those, but what sets this funky little lad apart from other maniraptorians of this time were the long rods of bone protruding from its wrists that supported membranous tissue not unlike the wings of a bat.

Here is a link to the original paper describing Yi qi if anyone is interested in learning more!

And just for fun cause she's super cool, here is a link to another of the paper's famous authers, Jingmai O'Connor's website, the punk rock palaeontologist!

Image Credits: (Left: Emily Willoughby, Right: Figure 2. Xu, Xing, Xiaoting Zheng, Corwin Sullivan, Xiaoli Wang, Lida Xing, Yan Wang, Xiaomei Zhang, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Fucheng Zhang, and Yanhong Pan. "A bizarre Jurassic maniraptoran theropod with preserved evidence of membranous wings." Nature 521, no. 7550 (2015): 70-73.)