Possible oviraptorosaur (Theropoda, Dinosauria) specimens from the Early Cretaceous Otway Group of Dinosaur Cove, Australia

The Early Cretaceous Otway and Strzelecki Groups exposed on the southern coast of Victoria, Australia, have produced a fauna of dinosaurs that lived within the Antarctic Circle. As many as five or six species of hypsilophodontids numerically dominate the collections from there, but the rarer and more fragmentary theropod remains suggest a surprising diversity of carnivorous dinosaurs. A possible surangular and an isolated vertebra have characters considered diagnostic for Late Cretaceous oviraptorosaurs of the Northern Hemisphere. Other fossils suggest the presence of ornithomimosaurs, dromaeosaurids and neoceratopsians, and with the possible oviraptorosaur remains, challenge the widespread assumption that these animals originated on the northern continents.