Amazing Siberian dino cemetery found

Adam Khor

I've actually been hearing about this for a while, and not a lot of details have surfaced.
Apparently the site- refered to as a Jurassic Pompeii- was found years ago, it contains the remains of many small dinosaurs, including Compsognathus (previously known only from Europe) and a small herbivorous dino. The interesting part is that according to some articles, both compys and the herbivores (similar to Psittacosaurus?) appear to be feathered.

They also say that they've found the smallest dinosaurs known to science, but I'm not sure if this is what the Russians really said or if something is lost in translation- as Compsognathus used to be considered the smallest dino.

Here's some sources:

http://siberiantimes.com/science/casestudy/news/an-amazing-collection-of-dinosaur-remains-found-in-volcanic-ash-in-siberia/

http://chita.rfn.ru/rnews.html?id=8604455&cid=7

Adam Khor

New stuff seems to be slowly leaking about this discovery. Now it appears that the feathered ornitischian is being called "Kulindodromeus", but unfortunately, the presentation of the finds at the SVP meeting in LA was cancelled. Here's the abstract, tho:

"Recent discoveries in Middle–Late Jurassic and Early Cretaceous deposits from northeastern China have revealed that numerous theropod dinosaurs were covered by feathers. Furthermore, filamentous integumentary structures were also recently described in rare Early Cretaceous ornithischian dinosaurs from Liaoning Province in China. Whether these filaments can be regarded as epidermal and therefore part of the evolutionary lineage towards feathers remains controversial. Here we describe a new basal neornithischian dinosaur, based on isolated bones and partial skeletons collected in two monospecific bonebeds from the Middle–Late Jurassic Kulinda locality in the Transbaikal region (Russia). Varied integumentary structures were found directly associated with skeletal elements, supporting the hypothesis that simple filamentous feathers, as well as compound feather-like structures comparable to those in theropods, were widespread amongst the whole dinosaur clade. Moreover, scales along the distal tibia and on the foot closely resemble the secondarily-appearing pedal scales in extant birds. More surprisingly, dorso-ventral movements of the tail were prevented by large imbricated scales on its dorsal surface. It is hypothesized that, at the same time early feathers evolved within the whole dinosaur clade, genetic mechanisms limiting the growth of long epidermal structures on the distal portion of the hind limb and on the tail were selected as they facilitate bipedal terrestrial locomotion."


So apparently, Kulindodromeus had feathery body, but scaly feet and tail.
Which is interesting because Compsognathus relative Juravenator was found to have both
feathers and scales, and the scaly portions did come from the tail.
Maybe paleoartists should stop drawing land-dwelling dinosaurs with those big fan-like
things at the end of the tail?