The oldest ceratosaurian (Dinosauria: Theropoda), from the Lower Jurassic of Italy, sheds light on the evolution of the three-fingered hand of birds.

The homology of the tridactyl hand of birds is a still debated subject, with both paleontological and developmental evidence used in support of alternative identity patterns in the avian fingers. With its simplified phalangeal morphology, the Late Jurassic ceratosaurian Limusaurus has been argued to support a II-III-IV digital identity in birds and a complex pattern of homeotic transformations in three-fingered (tetanuran) theropods. We report a new large-bodied theropod, Saltriovenator zanellai gen. et sp. nov., based on a partial skeleton from the marine Saltrio Formation (Sinemurian, lowermost Jurassic) of Lombardy (Northern Italy). Taphonomical analyses show bone bioerosion by marine invertebrates (first record for dinosaurian remains) and suggest a complex history for the carcass before being deposited on a well-oxygenated and well-illuminated sea bottom. Saltriovenator shows a mosaic of features seen in four-fingered theropods and in basal tetanurans. Phylogenetic analysis supports sister taxon relationships between the new Italian theropod and the younger Early Jurassic Berberosaurus from Morocco, in a lineage which is the basalmost of Ceratosauria. Compared to the atrophied hand of later members of Ceratosauria, Saltriovenator demonstrates that a fully functional hand, well-adapted for struggling and grasping, was primitively present in ceratosaurians. Ancestral state reconstruction along the avian stem supports 2-3-4-1-X and 2-3-4-0-X as the manual phalangeal formulae at the roots of Ceratosauria and Tetanurae, confirming the I-II-III pattern in the homology of the avian fingers. Accordingly, the peculiar hand of Limusaurus represents a derived condition restricted to late-diverging ceratosaurians and cannot help in elucidating the origin of the three-fingered condition of tetanurans. The evolution of the tridactyl hand of birds is explained by step-wise lateral simplification among non-tetanuran theropod dinosaurs, followed by a single primary axis shift from digit position 4 to 3 at the root of Tetanurae once the fourth finger was completely lost, which allowed independent losses of the vestigial fourth metacarpal among allosaurians, tyrannosauroids, and maniraptoromorphs. With an estimated body length of 7.5 m, Saltriovenator is the largest and most robust theropod from the Early Jurassic, pre-dating the occurrence in theropods of a body mass approaching 1,000 Kg by over 25 My. The radiation of larger and relatively stockier averostran theropods earlier than previously known may represent one of the factors that ignited the trend toward gigantism in Early Jurassic sauropods.