Citipes

Say it: SIT-ih-peez

Name means: “fleet-footed”1

Ate: A bit of everythingOdd feathered dinosLate Cretaceous

Citipes was a small, fast-running dinosaur that lived in what is now Canada and the USA. It had a beak like a parrot and probably ate plants and small animals. Scientists think it was covered in feathers.1

Lived

84 to 66 million years ago2

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Alberta, Canada and Montana, USA2

Food

A bit of everything2

Length

1.5 to 2.5 m1

estimated, based on related caenagnathids

Weight

10 kg to 20 kg1

Height

0.5 to 0.8 m1

at the hips

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Citipes was named in 2020, but its fossils were first discovered in 1926 and were thought to belong to other dinosaurs like Ornithomimus.1

A fossil of a young Gorgosaurus was found with the legs of at least two Citipes inside its stomach, showing that Citipes was hunted by this larger dinosaur.1

The Citipes legs inside the Gorgosaurus were from babies less than one year old, and the Gorgosaurus seemed to prefer eating the muscular hind legs.1

Citipes had a fused ankle and strong leg muscles, which made it a very fast runner.1

One Citipes fossil shows a broken hip bone that had healed, meaning the animal survived a serious injury.1

Citipes lived alongside two other similar dinosaurs, Caenagnathus and Chirostenotes, but they were different sizes and probably ate different foods to avoid competing.1

AI-made picture of Citipes — An AI-made picture of how Citipes 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.

Myth buster

Myth: Citipes is often confused with the dinosaur Citipati, which has a similar name.

Truth: Citipes and Citipati are different dinosaurs. Citipati is an oviraptorid from Mongolia, while Citipes is a caenagnathid from North America.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Citipes
Named by: Funston 20202
Group: Odd feathered dinos
Family / clade: Caenagnathidae2
Classification: Theropoda > Oviraptorosauria2
Age of the rocks: 84 to 66 million years (Campanian to Maastrichtian)2
Rock formations: Dinosaur Park, Hell Creek2
Countries: Canada, USA2
Fossil records: 12 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: The first Citipes fossils were found in 1926 in Alberta, Canada, by a University of Toronto expedition. They were named Ornithomimus elegans by William Parks in 1933, but later moved to their own genus Citipes by Gregory Funston in 2020.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly what Citipes ate. It had a beak but no teeth, so it may have eaten plants, small animals, or both.1

Where the facts come from

Citipes (en.wikipedia.org)
Citipes 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.