Eudromaeosauria
extinct clade of theropod dinosaurs
Eudromaeosauria (/ˌjuːdrəʊˈmeɪːəʊˈsɔːri͡ə/; "true dromaeosaurs") is a subgroup of terrestrial dromaeosaurid theropod dinosaurs. They were small to large-sized predators that flourished during the Cretaceous Period. Eudromaeosaur fossils are known almost exclusively from the northern hemisphere.
They first appeared in the early Cretaceous Period and survived until the end of the Cretaceous (Maastrichtian stage, 66 Ma). The earliest known definitive eudromaeosaur is the probable dromaeosaurine Yurgovuchia, from the Cedar Mountain Formation, dated to 139 million years ago. However, the earlier (143-million-year-old) fossils such as those of Nuthetes and several indeterminate teeth dating to the Kimmeridgian stage may represent eudromaeosaurs.
While other dromaeosaurids filled a variety of specialized ecological niches, mainly those of small predators or specialized piscivores, eudromaeosaurs functioned as hypercarnivores and are suggested to have been predators of medium- to large-sized prey. Aside from their generally larger size, eudromaeosaurs are also characterized by several features of the foot.
History of study
The subfamily Dromaeosaurinae was first erected in 1922 by William Matthew and Barnum Brown as a part of the "Deinodontidae" (now named Tyrannosauridae). Today, Dromaeosaurinae has been formally defined as a monophyletic group including Dromaeosaurus and all the other dromaeosaurs closer to it than to Velociraptor, Microraptor, Passer and Unenlagia.
“Eudromaeosauria” enters the record as extinct clade of theropod dinosaurs. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Eudromaeosauria, extinct and clade can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q897132. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1922.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eudromaeosauria” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.