Hesperonychus

It is known from fossils recovered from the Dinosaur Park Formation and possibly from the uppermost strata of the Oldman Formation of Alberta, dating to the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous around 75 million years ago. Hesperonychus is mainly known from one partial pelvic girdle, holotype specimen UALVP 48778, collected by Dr. Elizabeth Nicholls in Dinosaur Provincial Park in 1982. The fossil remained undescribed, however, until Nick Longrich and Phil Currie published on it in 2009. A number of very small toe bones discovered from the Dinosaur Park Formation and Oldman Formation, including "sickle claws", in the collection of the Royal Tyrrell Museum have been tentatively referred to as cf. Hesperonychus. The gracile appearances of these potential toe bones make it unlikely that Hesperonychus belonged to the Eudromaeosauria. Despite their small size, the pubic bones were fused, a characteristic of adult dinosaurs, indicating that the specimen does not represent a juvenile of a known species. Though known from partial remains, researchers have estimated that it was a small dinosaur measuring about 1 metre (3.3 ft) long and weighing between 1.5 and 2 kilograms (3.3 and 4.4 lb), making it one of the smallest non-avian dinosaurs known from North America.