The holotype of Deinocheirus mirificus was collected by the 1965 Polish–Mongolian Palaeontological Expedition at Altan Uul III in the southern Gobi of Mongolia. Because the holotype consists mostly of giant forelimbs (2.4 m in length) with scapulocoracoids, for almost 50 years Deinocheirus has remained one of the most mysterious dinosaurs. The mosaic of ornithomimosaur and non-ornithomimosaur characters in the holotype has made it difficult to resolve the phylogenetic status of Deinocheirus. Here we describe two new specimens of Deinocheirus that were discovered in the Nemegt Formation of Altan Uul IV in 2006 and Bugiin Tsav in 2009. Leer más.

Carola Gómez-Rodríguez, Andrés Baselga and John J. Wiens. Global Ecology and Biogeography. Article first published online: 10 OCT 2014. Our results identify climatic niche width, and especially the relationship between family and species-level niche widths, as a major correlate of diversification rates among amphibian families. These results suggest that climatic niche divergence among species within clades can be important in explaining large-scale diversity patterns, possibly even more so than a clade’s geographic area or whether it is primarily temperate or tropical. Leer más.