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Biography

Limusaurus is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in what is now China during the Late Jurassic, around 161 to 157 million years ago. The type and only species Limusaurus inextricabilis was described in 2009 from specimens found in the Upper Shishugou Formation in the Junggar Basin of China. The genus name consists of the Latin words for "mud" and "lizard", and the species name means "impossible to extricate", both referring to these specimens possibly dying after being mired. Limusaurus was a small, slender animal, about 1.7 m (5 ft 7 in) in length and 15 kg (33 lb) in weight, which had a long neck and legs but very small forelimbs (with reduced first and fourth fingers). It underwent a drastic morphological transformation as it aged: while juveniles were toothed, these teeth were completely lost and replaced by a beak with age. Several of these features were convergently similar to the later ornithomimid theropods as well as the earlier non-dinosaurian shuvosaurids. Limusaurus was the first known member of the group Ceratosauria from Asia. It belonged to the Noasauridae, a family of small and lightly built ceratosaurs, along with its closest relative Elaphrosaurus. The pattern of digit reduction in Limusaurus has been used to support the hypothesis that the three-fingered hand of tetanuran theropods is the result of the loss of the first and fifth digits from the ancestral five-fingered theropod hand, a contested hypothesis which is relevant to the evolution of birds. The change to toothlessness in adults probably corresponded to a dietary shift from omnivory to herbivory, which is confirmed by the presence of gastroliths (stomach stones) in adults. Since many specimens were found together, it is possible Limusaurus lived in groups. Its fossils were discovered in rocks dated to the Oxfordian age. Specimens of Limusaurus (along with other small animals) appear to have been mired in mud pits created by the footprints of giant sauropod dinosaurs.