- About 70 million years ago, in present Mongolia and northern China, a pint-sized nocturnal predator called Shuvuuia deserti lived.
- The name Shuvuuia is derived from the Mongolian word shuvuu meaning “bird”.
- It was a pheasant-sized, two-legged Cretaceous Period dinosaur weighing about as much as a small house cat.
- It lacked strong jaws and sharp teeth unlike many carnivorous dinosaurs, but had a bird-like and lightly built skull and many tiny teeth like grains of rice.
- It belonged to a group called alvarezsaurus which had nocturnal vision very early in their lineage, but super-hearing took more time to evolve.
- Shuvuuia deserti, or “desert bird” is the only known species in this group.
- It had visual and auditory capabilities akin to a barn owl, indicating it could hunt in total darkness.
- It had a very wide scleral ring, indicating an extra-large pupil size that made its eye a specialized light-capture device.
- Unlike birds, it had short but powerful arms ending in a single large claw, good for digging.
- Shuvuuia is unique among non-avian theropods in the skull’s ability to perform pyrokinesis, that is, it could flex its upper jaw independently of its braincase.
- Contemporary genera included Velociraptor and Protoceratops.
Source: The Hindu
