Dino card No. 0813 of 2,027

Holbotia

Say it: hol-BOH-tee-uh

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

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Holbotia was a small, feathered dinosaur that could fly, called a bird. It lived in Mongolia about 125 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous. It had a special neck that could bend in a very flexible way, which was unusual for its kind.2

Lived

133 to 121 million years ago4

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Mongolia (Ovorkhangai), in the Andaikhudag Formation3 2

Food

Meat3

Length

0.1 to 0.5 m3

estimated from adult length range in PBDB (10 to < 100 cm)

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 3 bananas end to end

How big was Holbotia compared to YOU?

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

cool stuff

Fun facts

Holbotia had a very flexible neck, with a bone shape that allowed it to bend its head in a way similar to modern darters, which are fish-eating birds.2

Its lower jaw had unusually widely spaced small teeth, which is different from many other early birds that had teeth packed closely together.2

Holbotia is the first articulated (still connected) skeleton of an enantiornithine bird ever found in Mongolia.2

The fossil was originally thought to be a pterosaur, a flying reptile, but scientists later realized it was a bird.2

Holbotia lived between 132 and 121 million years ago, during the Hauterivian to Barremian ages of the Early Cretaceous.3

It had a crest on the back of its lower leg bone, a feature not seen in other early birds of its group.2

AI-made picture of Holbotia — An AI-made picture of how Holbotia 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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Myth buster

Myth: Some people think Holbotia was a pterosaur because its fossil was first misidentified.

Truth: Holbotia was actually a bird, a type of feathered dinosaur, not a flying reptile. Scientists corrected the mistake after studying the bones.2

For dino experts

Scientific name: Holbotia
Named by: Zelenkov and Averianov 20154
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Enantiornithes4
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae4
Age of the rocks: 133 to 121 million years (Hauterivian / Barremian)4
Rock formations: Andaikhudag4
Countries: Mongolia4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: The fossil was unearthed in 1977 by palaeoentomologist Alexander G. Ponomarenko, but it was not officially named until 2015 by Zelenkov and Averianov. The species name honors Ponomarenko.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are still debating how Holbotia is related to other early birds, especially whether its tooth loss evolved separately from other bird groups.2

Where the facts come from

Holbotia (en.wikipedia.org)
Holbotia, enantiornithine bird from Early Cretaceous of Mongolia now official (reptilis.net)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Holbotia 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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