Albertavenator Temporal range: Late Cretaceous,
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Illustration of the holotype frontal of Albertavenator | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Clade: | Dinosauria |
Clade: | Saurischia |
Clade: | Theropoda |
Family: | †Troodontidae |
Genus: | †Albertavenator Evans et al., 2017 |
Type species | |
†Albertavenator curriei Evans et al., 2017
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Albertavenator (meaning "Alberta hunter") is a genus of small troodontid theropod dinosaur, known from the early Maastrichtian in the Cretaceous period. It contains a single species, A. curriei, named after paleontologist Phil Currie, based on a partial left frontal found in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation of Alberta during the 1990s.[1][2] Albertavenator's discovery indicates that small dinosaur diversity may be underestimated at present due to the difficulty in identifying species from fragmentary remains.[3]