Haya

Say it: HAH-yah

Name means: “named after Hayagriva, a Hindu god with a horse head, because its skull is long like a horse's”1

Ate: PlantsBeaked plant-eatersLate Cretaceous

Haya was a small, plant-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now Mongolia. It had a long, horse-like skull and a beak for snipping plants. Some Haya skeletons were found with a pile of stomach stones, which helped it grind up tough leaves.1

Lived

86 to 72 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Javkhlant Formation and Zos Canyon in the Gobi Desert, Mongolia1

Food

Plants2 1

Length

1.5 to 2 m1

estimated

Weight

10 kg to 20 kg1

estimated

Height

0.5 to 0.6 m1

at the hips, estimated

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, estimated

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 5 house cats

as long as 4 house cats nose to tailas long as 11 bananas end to endas heavy as 4 watermelons

How big was Haya compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Haya lived about 85 to 72 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period.2

One Haya skeleton, called IGM 100/2015, was found with a big pile of gastroliths, stones that the dinosaur swallowed to help digest plants.1

The name Haya comes from Hayagriva, a Hindu god with a horse head, because Haya's skull is long and horse-like.1

Scientists have found several Haya fossils, including skulls, leg bones, and nearly complete skeletons.1

Haya was a small dinosaur, but its exact size is not known from the fossils found so far.2

Some scientists think Haya was closely related to dinosaurs like Jeholosaurus and Changchunsaurus, while others place it in a different group called Thescelosauridae.1

AI-made picture of Haya — An AI-made picture of how Haya 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: Haya
Named by: Makovicky et al. 20113
Group: Beaked plant-eaters
Family / clade: Thescelosauridae3
Classification: Ornithischia3
Age of the rocks: 86 to 72 million years (Santonian / Campanian)3
Rock formations: Javkhlant, Djadokhta3
Countries: Mongolia3
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Haya was named in 2011 by Peter Makovicky and his team. The first fossils were collected in Mongolia between 2002 and 2007 by the Mongolian Academy of Sciences.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly where Haya belongs on the dinosaur family tree. Some studies put it in Jeholosauridae, others in Thescelosauridae.1

Where the facts come from

Haya griva (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Haya 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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