paravian

plural paravians

1. Any birdlike dinosaur of the clade Paraves, dinosaurs more closely related to birds than to oviraptorosaurs.

   We note that the difference forelimb:hindlimb ratio is within the range of intraspecific variation in two paravian taxa known from multiple specimens, Microraptor 17 and Archaeopteryx 19 20, and is therefore not likely to be a clearly distinguishing feature between Tianyuraptor and Zhanyuanlong .

   2015 July 16, Junchang Lü, Stephen L. Brusatte, “A large, short-armed, winged dromaeosaurid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from the Early Cretaceous of China and its implications for feather evolution”, in Scientific Reports, volume 5, →DOI