page_title: Mononykus
section_title: Description
hierarchical_section_title: Mononykus / Description
caption_attribution_description: English: Size comparison of several parvicursorine dinosaurs. From left to right: Parvicursor remotus (green), Ceratonykus oculatus (red), Shuvuuia deserti (blue), and Mononykus olecranus (violet). Scaled to tibia length in their respective descriptions.
context_page_description: Mononykus was a theropod dinosaur from late Cretaceous Mongolia with long, thin legs. Mononykus was originally named Mononychus in 1993, but later that year, it was renamed because the original name had already been used for a beetle named by Johann Schueppel, a German entomologist.
context_section_description: Mononykus was a small dinosaur, only 1 metre (3.3 ft) long and 3.5 kg (7.7 lbs). Other characteristics include fused wrist bones similar to those of birds, and a keeled breastbone. It differed from close relatives Shuvuuia and Parvicursor in several details of its skeleton, including a pubic bone that is triangular in cross section, and different proportions in the toe bones.
  Mononykus is currently represented by a single holotype specimen, catalog number IGM N107/6. This specimen consists of a partial skeleton lacking a tail, and only small fragments of skull bones, including a complete braincase. Several other specimens were later misclassified as Mononykus, including specimens with partial tails (initially misinterpreted as being very short, though later specimens showed they were long and thin) and complete skulls showing a distinct, mostly toothless form. However, these specimens have since been reclassified in the new genus Shuvuuia. Because of this, many reconstructions of Mononykus in art and mounted skeletons in museums are in fact based mainly on Shuvuuia.
  While Mononykus was formally described in the 1990s, it was reported that a specimen possibly belonging this genus had already been unearthed by the Andrews expedition decades before. The specimen had been in the American Museum of Natural History collection, labeled simply as "bird-like dinosaur". However, given the reassignment of the other specimens to related genera, and the difference in age (the AMNH specimen is from the older Djadochta Formation), it is unlikely to be Mononykus.
caption: Size of various Alvarezsaurids compared to a human, Mononykus in violet
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