Dinosaur discovery in Chile, missing link?

This video says about itself:

4 September 2015

“Chilesaurus” is an extinct genus of herbivorous theropod dinosaur. The genus is monotypic, represented by the type species “Chilesaurus diegosuarezi“. “Chilesaurus” lived approximately 145 million years ago in the Late Jurassic period of Chile.

Fossils of “Chilesaurus”, a vertebra and a rib, were first discovered on 4 February 2004 by the seven-year-old Diego Suárez who, together with his parents, geologists Manuel Suárez and Rita de la Cruz, was searching for decorative stones in the Aysén Region. More specimens were present that in 2008 were reported as representing several dinosaurian species. Only later was it realised that these belonged to a single species with a bizarre combination of traits.

In 2015, the type species “Chilesaurus diegosuarezi” was named and described by Fernando Emilio Novas, Leonardo Salgado, Manuel Suárez, Federico Lisandro Agnolín, Martín Dário Ezcurra, Nicolás Chimento, Rita de la Cruz, Marcelo Pablo Isasi, Alexander Omar Vargas and David Rubilar-Rogers. The generic name refers to Chile. The specific name honours Diego Suárez.

The holotype, “SNGM-1935”, was found in a layer of the Toqui Formation dating from the late Tithonian. It consists of an articulated rather complete skeleton with skull of a juvenile individual, lacking the feet and most of the tail. Four other partial skeletons and several single bones are the paratypes. They represent juvenile and adult individuals.

“Chilesaurus” measures 3.2 m from nose to tail. The holotype is a smaller individual of half that length.

That was in 2015. But now …

From Biology Letters:

A dinosaur missing-link? Chilesaurus and the early evolution of ornithischian dinosaurs

Matthew G. Baron, Paul M. Barrett

16 August 2017

Abstract

The enigmatic dinosaur taxon Chilesaurus diegosuarezi was originally described as a tetanuran theropod, but this species possesses a highly unusual combination of features that could provide evidence of alternative phylogenetic positions within the clade.

In order to test the relationships of Chilesaurus, we added it to a new dataset of early dinosaurs and other dinosauromorphs. Our analyses recover Chilesaurus in a novel position, as the earliest diverging member of Ornithischia, rather than a tetanuran theropod. The basal position of Chilesaurus within the clade and its suite of anatomical characters suggest that it might represent a ‘transitional’ taxon, bridging the morphological gap between Theropoda and Ornithischia, thereby offering potential insights into the earliest stages of ornithischian evolution, which were previously obscure. For example, our results suggest that pubic retroversion occurred prior to some of the craniodental and postcranial modifications that previously diagnosed the clade (e.g. the presence of a predentary bone and ossified tendons).

1. Introduction

Chilesaurus diegosuarezi is from the Late Jurassic (Tithonian; ca 150 Ma) Toqui Formation of Chile and possesses a bizarre suite of anatomical features that, if considered individually, are usually thought to characterize distantly related dinosaur clades.