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Anserimimus

Say it: ANN-ser-ih-MEE-muss

Name means: “goose mimic”1

Ate: A bit of everythingOstrich dinosLate Cretaceous

Anserimimus was a fast, long-legged dinosaur that looked a bit like an ostrich. It had strong arms with flat claws, which made it different from its relatives. This dinosaur lived in what is now Mongolia during the Late Cretaceous period.2

Lived

72 to 66 million years ago4

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Mongolia (Bayankhongor Province, Nemegt Formation)2 3

Food

A bit of everything2 3

Length

3 to 3.5 m2 1

Weight

50 kg to 170 kg2

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Anserimimus had flat, straight claws on its hands, unlike the curved claws of other ornithomimids.2

Its arms were more powerful than those of other ornithomimids, with large crests for strong muscles like the biceps.2

The hand bones (metacarpals) were fused together, making the hand stronger.2

Anserimimus lived about 70 million years ago, during the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous.2

Only one complete skeleton of Anserimimus has been found, and it is missing the skull and lower jaws.2

Its closest relative might be Gallimimus, another ornithomimid from the same formation in Mongolia.2

Anserimimus lived alongside giant dinosaurs like Tarbosaurus and Deinocheirus in the Nemegt Formation.2

AI-made picture of Anserimimus — An AI-made picture of how Anserimimus might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

For dino experts

Scientific name: Anserimimus
Named by: Barsbold 19884
Group: Ostrich dinos
Family / clade: Ornithomimidae4
Classification: Theropoda > Ornithomimosauria4
Age of the rocks: 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)4
Rock formations: Nemegt4
Countries: Mongolia4
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Anserimimus was named by Mongolian paleontologist Rinchen Barsbold in 1988, based on a skeleton found during a Soviet-Mongolian expedition to the Gobi Desert in the late 1970s.2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure what Anserimimus ate, because its skull has never been found. Its strong arms and flat claws might mean it had a different diet or way of gathering food than other ornithomimids.2

Where the facts come from

Anserimimus | Natural History Museum (nhm.ac.uk)
Anserimimus (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Anserimimus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.