Henan Province, central China. It contains a single species, Yulong mini. It is known from many juvenile specimens that represent some of the smallest known oviraptorids[1] and also a single subadult specimen.[2]
Henan Province, in reference to the occurrence of the genus, and from 龙/龍 lóng meaning "dragon" - a suffix commonly used to name Chinese dinosaurs like the Greeksaurus is in the West. The specific name, mini, refers to the small size of the specimens.[1]
Yulong is based on a
Henan Geological Museum, only lacking the skull and the neck base; HGM 41HIII-0108: a skull lacking the lower jaws; HGM 41HIII-0109: a partial skeleton with skull and lower jaws; HGM 41HIII-0110: a partial skull with lower jaws and some neck vertebrae; and HGM 41HIII-0111: a left ilium. Additional finds have been mentioned in the describing paper. One exceptionally preserved embryo (within an egg) is HGM 41HIII-0301, which came from a nest of 26 eggs.[1] The first non-juvenile specimen of Y. mini was described by Wei et al. (2022) and consists of three dorsal and 29 caudal vertebrae, partial pectoral girdles, and forelimbs.[2]
Description
Size comparison
While
meter, making them some of the smallest known oviraptorids.[1]
The describing authors established some diagnostic traits. The front upper corner of the
postzygapophyses. The thigh bone is longer than the ilium.[1]
According to the authors, the hindlimb proportions of oviraptorids do not essentially change during growth, indicating a more sedentary lifestyle and thus probably
A phylogenetic analysis performed by the describers found Yulong to be more derived than the gigantic oviraptorid
phylogenetic position of Yulong is still uncertain, because younger specimens tend to display more basal traits than adult specimens that are unknown for Yulong.[1]
Wei et al. (2022) found Yulong to be a basal oviraptorid outside
