Machairasaurus

Machairasaurus is a genus of oviraptorid dinosaur which was found in the Bayan Mandahu Formation, China, dating to the late Cretaceous period.

==Discovery== During the Sino-Canadian expeditions of 1988 and 1990 some skeletons of unknown oviraptorosaurians were discovered by Philip J. Currie in Inner Mongolia. Based on two of these a new genus was named and described by Nicholas Longrich, Philip Currie, and Dong Zhiming in 2010 with the type species Machairasaurus leptonychus. The generic name is derived from Greek ('), "short scimitar". The specific name is derived from Greek ('), "slender", and (''), "claw". The species name as a whole refers to the sabre-like claws of the hand.