Kuszholia is the name given to a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of primitive bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 or bird-like dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

 from the Late Cretaceous

Late Cretaceous

The Late Cretaceous is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous period is divided in the geologic timescale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous series...

. It was possibly a coelurosaur close to the ancestry of birds, although most scientists have considered it an avialan

Avialae

Avialae is a clade of dinosaurs containing their only living representatives, birds , and the most immediate extinct relatives of birds.-Competing definitions:...

 (either related to Patagopteryx

Patagopteryx

Patagopteryx is an extinct monotypic genus of birds that lived during the Late Cretaceous, around 80 mya, in what is now the Sierra Barrosa in northwestern Patagonia, Argentina. About the size of a chicken, it is the earliest known unequivocal example of secondary flightlessness: its skeleton...

or a primitive ornithuran

Ornithurae

Ornithurae is the name of a natural group which includes all modern birds as well as their extinct relatives with plough-shaped pygostyles, a bone at the end of the tail which allows the tail feathers to fan and retract....

). Its fossils were found in the Bissekty Formation

Bissekty Formation

The Bissekty Formation is situated in the Kyzyl Kum desert of Uzbekistan, and dates from the late Cretaceous Period. Laid down in the early the Turonian to Coniacian stages, it is dated to about 90-85 ma .The Bissekty Formation is characterised by a mix of marine, brackish, freshwater, and...

 in the Kyzyl Kum

Kyzyl Kum

The Kyzyl Kum , also called Qyzylqum, is the 11th largest desert in the world. Its name means Red Sand in Turkic languages. It is located in Central Asia in the doab between the rivers Amu Darya and Syr Darya, and is divided between Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan...

 desert of Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan

Uzbekistan , officially the Republic of Uzbekistan is a doubly landlocked country in Central Asia and one of the six independent Turkic states. It shares borders with Kazakhstan to the west and to the north, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the east, and Afghanistan and Turkmenistan to the south....

.

The genus contains a single species, K. mengi; a separate family

Family (biology)

In biological classification, family is* a taxonomic rank. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species, with family fitting between order and genus. As for the other well-known ranks, there is the option of an immediately lower rank, indicated by the...

has been erected for it (Kuszholiidae). It is known only from a series of small vertebrae, with prominent hollow chambers (pneumaticity).

External links

• George Olshevsky on Kuszholia, from the Dinosaur Mailing List