Dino card No. 0519 of 2,027

Dingavis

Say it: DING-ah-vis

Name means: “Ding's bird, named after Ding Wenjiang, the 'Father of Chinese Geology'”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Dingavis was a small, feathered dinosaur that lived about 122 million years ago in what is now China. It had a long beak and probably ran around on the ground looking for food.1 4

Lived

121 to 113 million years ago4

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Liaoning Province, China, at the Sihedang locality1 2

Food

Meat4

Length

0.25 to 0.3 m3

body length excluding tail feathers

Weight

0.27 kg3

estimate

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 2.5 bananas

lighter than a house cat

How big was Dingavis compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

cool stuff

Fun facts

Dingavis had a very long beak, and most of that beak was made from the upper jaw bone called the maxilla, not the premaxilla like in modern birds.2

The only known fossil of Dingavis is an almost complete skeleton with skull, and it even has feather remains preserved around the neck.1

About forty gastroliths, which are stones that some animals swallow to help grind food, were found with the Dingavis fossil.1

Dingavis lived during the Aptian age of the Early Cretaceous, about 122 million years ago.1

The fossil of Dingavis was found in the Jiufotang Formation, a rock layer famous for many amazing feathered dinosaur fossils.4 2

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

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For dino experts

Scientific name: Dingavis
Named by: O'Connor et al. 20164
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Ornithuromorpha4
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae4
Age of the rocks: 121 to 113 million years (Aptian)4
Rock formations: Jiufotang4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: The Dingavis fossil was found at Sihedang in Liaoning, China, and was named in 2015 by Jingmai O'Connor, Wang Min, and Hu Han. The specimen is kept at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing.1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Dingavis is related to other early birds, and whether its long beak was used for a special kind of feeding.2

Where the facts come from

Dingavis (en.wikipedia.org)
A new ornithurine from the Early Cretaceous of China sheds light on the evolution of early ecological and cranial diversity in birds (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
丁氏鳥屬 - 维基百科，自由的百科全书 (w.lzycloud.uk)
Dingavis in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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