Datonglong

Say it: dah-TONG-long

Name means: “Datong dragon, after the city of Datong in China”1

Ate: PlantsBeaked plant-eatersLate Cretaceous

Datonglong was a plant-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now China during the Late Cretaceous. It had a special jaw with two teeth in each tooth spot, which helped it chew tough plants.1 2

Lived

100 to 72 million years ago4

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Shanxi Province, China3 1

Food

Plants3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Datonglong had two functional teeth in each tooth socket, which is different from most other hadrosauroids.2

The only known fossil of Datonglong is a piece of its lower jaw, called a dentary, which is 34 centimeters (13 inches) long.1

Its teeth could be up to 5.5 centimeters (2.2 inches) tall, even before they fully grew in.1

Datonglong lived between about 100 and 72 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period.3

The name Datonglong means 'Datong dragon', after the city of Datong in China where the fossil was found.1

Datonglong is a hadrosauroid, meaning it is closely related to duck-billed dinosaurs but not a true hadrosaurid.1

The fossil was discovered in 2008 by a team from the Shanxi Museum of Geological and Mineral Science and Technology.1

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

you asked

Most asked questions about Datonglong

?What did Datonglong eat?

It was a plant-eater. Its special jaw with two teeth in each spot helped it chew tough plants.1

?How big was Datonglong?

Nobody knows for sure because only a piece of its lower jaw, 34 centimetres (13 inches) long, has been found. Scientists cannot estimate its full size from just that.1

?When did Datonglong live?

It lived during the Late Cretaceous period, roughly between 95 and 80 million years ago.1

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Datonglong
Named by: Xu et al. 20164
Group: Beaked plant-eaters
Family / clade: Hadrosauroidea4
Classification: Ornithischia > Ornithopoda > Iguanodontia4
Age of the rocks: 100 to 72 million years (Cenomanian / Campanian)4
Rock formations: Huiquanpu4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Datonglong was named and described in 2016 by Xu Shicha and colleagues, based on a lower jaw found in the Huiquanpu Formation of Shanxi, China.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how old the Datonglong fossil is, but it likely dates from between 100 and 72 million years ago.1

Where the facts come from

Datonglong (en.wikipedia.org)
A New Hadrosauroid Dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous of Tianzhen, Shanxi Province, China (vertpala.ac.cn)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Datonglong 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.

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