Dino card No. 0768 of 2,027

Gurilynia

Say it: goo-ril-IN-ee-uh

Name means: “named after the Gurilyn Tsav locality where it was found”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsLate Cretaceous

Gurilynia was a big, ancient bird that lived in Mongolia near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. It was one of the largest birds of its time, about the size of a modern chicken but much heavier. It flew over dry plains and hunted for food.1

Lived

72 to 66 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Gurilyn Tsav locality, Nemegt Formation, southern Gobi Desert, Mongolia1 2

Food

Meat2

Length

0.53 m1

estimated from fragmentary fossils

Weight

2.1 kg1

Height

0.232 m1

at the hips

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How tall was it?

at the hips

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 18 bananas

as long as 3 bananas end to endabout as heavy as a house catas heavy as 18 bananas

How big was Gurilynia compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Gurilynia is known from only three partial bones: the top end of a right upper arm bone, the bottom end of a left upper arm bone, and the shoulder end of a left coracoid.1

It was the largest bird ever found from the Cretaceous period in Mongolia, weighing about 2.1 kilograms (4.6 pounds).1

The head of its upper arm bone was about 29 millimeters (1.1 inches) wide, much bigger than that of Pengornis, the largest Early Cretaceous enantiornithine.1

Gurilynia belonged to a group of ancient birds called enantiornithines, which had teeth and claws on their wings.1

It lived between 70 and 66 million years ago, right before the mass extinction that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs.1

The fossils were found in the Nemegt Formation, which was a wet floodplain with rivers and forests during the Late Cretaceous.1

AI-made picture of Gurilynia — An AI-made picture of how Gurilynia 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: Gurilynia
Named by: Kurochkin 19993
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Enantiornithidae3
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae3
Age of the rocks: 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)3
Rock formations: Nemegt3
Countries: Mongolia3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Gurilynia was named by Russian paleontologist Evgeny Kurochkin in 1999, based on fossils collected from the Gurilyn Tsav locality in Mongolia. The species name nessovi honors a colleague.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Gurilynia was because only a few bone fragments have been found. The size estimates might change if more complete fossils are discovered.1

Where the facts come from

Gurilynia (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Gurilynia 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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