Dale Russell
The hypothesis that caenagnathids were birds was questioned as early as 1956 by Romer, but not corrected until Osmolska formally reclassified them as dinosaurs in 1976. Meanwhile, the classification of "Oviraptor" as an ornithomimid persisted unquestioned by researchers like Romer and Steel until the early when Dale Russell argued against the idea in 1972. In 1976 when Osmolska recognized "Oviraptor"'s relationship with the Caenagnathids, she also recognized that it was not an ornithomimid and reclassified it as a member of the former family. However, that same year Rinchen Barsbold argued that "Oviraptor" belonged to a distinct family he named the Oviraptoridae and he also formally named the Oviraptorosauria later in the same year.