Sinosauropteryx

Various news articles have reported on a study of the Sinosauropteryx and related dinosaurs, e.g., “Study Offers an Insight into Dinosaur Colors” (New York Times) and “Dinosaur Had Ginger Feathers” (BBC).  These articles were responding to a report published online in Nature, “Fossil Feathers Reveal Dinosaurs' True Colours.”   The BBC article begins:

Meet Sinosauropteryx, a very spiky little dinosaur.

A team of scientists from China and the UK has now revealed that the bristles of this 125-million-year-old dinosaur were in fact ginger-coloured feathers.

The researchers say that the diminutive carnivore had a “Mohican” of feathers running along its head and back. It also had a striped tail.

Works on the Sinosauropteryx are classed in 567.912 Saurischia, e.g., Sinosauropteryx--Mysterious Feathered Dinosaur.

How does a cataloger know that Sinosauropteryx should be classed in 567.912 Saurischia?    The entry has the class-here note: “Class here Theropoda (carnivorous dinosaurs).” The online report in Nature includes this:

The team discovered the melanosomes in fossils of the suborder Theropoda, the branch of the dinosaur family tree to which the flesh-eating species Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus belong. However, it was not in these two iconic dinosaurs that the organelles were found, but in smaller species that ran around low to the ground with tiny feathers or bristles distributed across their bodies.
. . . . .
Fossils of one theropod dinosaur, Sinosauropteryx, reveal that it had light and dark feathered stripes along the length of its tail.

Other sources also point to 567.912 Saurischia.  For example, the LCSH authority record for Sinosauropteryx has this information in the source-data-found field:

Sinosauropteryx/Enchanted learning software WWW site, July 20, 2004 (genus: Sinosauropteryx; family: Compsognathidae; order: Saurischia; class: Archosauria).

Here is a link to the Enchanted Learning site’s “Sinosauropteryx Fact Sheet.”  Encyclopædia Britannica Online mentions Sinosauropteryx in “Dinosaur Descendants” while discussing evidence that “that birds (class Aves) evolved from small theropod dinosaurs.”

Since Sinosauropteryx is only one of many theropod dinosaurs, the topic Sinosauropteryx is in standing room at 567.912; standard subdivisions could not be added for a work about Sinosauropteryx.