Piksi barbarulna
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Piksi Temporal range: Late Cretaceous, 75 Ma |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Dinosauria |
| Order: | Saurischia |
| Suborder: | Theropoda |
| Genus: |
†Piksi Varricchio, 2002 |
| Species: | †P. barbarulna |
| Binomial name | |
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Piksi barbarulna Varricchio, 2002 |
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Piksi is a potential theropod genus containing the single species Piksi barbarulna (meaning "strange elbowed big bird", from Blackfoot piksi, "big bird" or, specifically, "chicken" and Latin barbarus "strange, outlandish" + ulna, elbow). It lived roughly 75 million years ago in what is now Montana, United States. Known from parts of a right wing – the humerus, ulna and radius bones – the only specimens found so far are housed in the Museum of the Rockies (collection number MOR 1113). The genus Piksi is monotypic at present.
The fossils were found in 1991 by Gloria Jean Siebrecht in the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, namely at Bob's Vacation Site locality TM-088, Glacier County. Recovered from an old stratum of the upper Two Medicine Formation, they are probably from an individual that died in or near a small pool. It was described in 2002 by David J. Varricchio.
The bones are fragmentary and represent roughly the elbow area. Comparing the fossils' size to the wing bones of other ground birds, P. barbarulna seems to have been about as large as a common pheasant, i.e. some 35–40 cm (15 in) long excluding tail, and with a wingspan of perhaps 80 cm (30 in) or somewhat less. It would thus have weighed some 500 g – 1 kg (1 - 2 pounds).
The original description of the fossils found its affinities unresolvable except that it was probably an ornithothoracine bird. Agnolin and Varricchio (2012) reinterpreted Piksi barbarulna as a pterosaur rather than a bird, most likely a member of Ornithocheiroidea. However, it has since been noted that the humerus of Piksi possesses features which found in some theropods but not in any pterodactyloid pterosaurs.
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