July 3, 2012 Last week, paleontologists at the Argentine Museum
of Natural Science in Buenos Aires literally unveiled a new
dinosaur. Named Bicentenaria argentina to celebrate the museum’s
200th anniversary and just over two centuries of Argentine
independence, the dinosaur was presented in a dramatic mount in
which two of the predatory dinosaurs face off against each
other. As yet, there’s not very much to say about the dinosaur.
The paper officially describing Bicentenaria has yet to be
published. Based on various news reports, though, Bicentenaria
appears to be a 90 million year old coelurosaur. This is the
major group of theropod dinosaurs that contains tyrannosaurs,
deinonychosaurs, therizinosaurs, and birds, among others, and
Bicentenaria is reportedly an archaic member of this group that
represents what the earliest coelurosaurs might have looked
like. It wouldn’t be an ancestor of birds or other coelurosaur
groups – by 90 million years ago, birds and other coelurosaurs
had already been around for tens