Alvarezsauroidea is a group of small maniraptorandinosaurs. Alvarezsauroidea, Alvarezsauridae, and Alvarezsauria are named for the historianDon Gregorio Alvarez, not the more familiar physicistLuis Alvarez, who proposed that the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by an impact event. The group was first formally proposed by Choiniere and colleagues in 2010, to contain the family Alvarezsauridae and non-alvarezsaurid alvarezsauroids, such as Haplocheirus, which is the basalmost of the Alvarezsauroidea (from the Late Jurassic, Asia). The discovery of Haplocheirus extended the stratigraphic evidence for the group Alvarezsauroidea about 63 million years further in the past. The division of Alvarezsauroidea into the Alvarezsauridae and the non-alvarezsaurid alvarezsauroids is based on differences in their morphology, especially in their hand morphology.
Alvarezsauroidea is a group of small maniraptorandinosaurs. Alvarezsauroidea, Alvarezsauridae, and Alvarezsauria are named for the historianDon Gregorio Alvarez, not the more familiar physicistLuis Alvarez, who proposed that the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was caused by an impact event. The group was first formally proposed by Choiniere and colleagues in 2010, to contain the family Alvarezsauridae and non-alvarezsaurid alvarezsauroids, such as Haplocheirus, which is the basalmost of the Alvarezsauroidea (from the Late Jurassic, Asia). The discovery of Haplocheirus extended the stratigraphic evidence for the group Alvarezsauroidea about 63 million years further in the past. The division of Alvarezsauroidea into the Alvarezsauridae and the non-alvarezsaurid alvarezsauroids is based on differences in their morphology, especially in their hand morphology.