Minqaria
Minqaria was a tiny duck-billed dinosaur that lived in Africa near the end of the age of dinosaurs. It was only about as long as a car and weighed as much as a big pig. Despite its small size, it was a full-grown adult!21
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Fun facts
Minqaria was a dwarf dinosaur, only about 3.5 metres (11 feet) long, much smaller than its giant relatives like Edmontosaurus.21
Its skull bones were fused together, which tells scientists it was a fully grown adult, not a baby.21
Minqaria lived alongside other dinosaurs in Morocco, including the duck-billed Ajnabia and the meat-eating Chenanisaurus.2
The name Minqaria comes from the Arabic word for 'beak', and bata means 'duck', so its full name is 'beak duck'.1
Minqaria belonged to a group of duck-billed dinosaurs called lambeosaurines, which often had fancy crests on their heads.21
Fossils of Minqaria were found in marine rocks, meaning its body washed out to sea after death.2
Most asked questions about Minqaria
?How big was Minqaria?
Minqaria was about 3.5 metres long and weighed about 250 kilograms, similar in size to a large motorcycle.12
?Was Minqaria a baby or an adult?
It was a fully grown adult. Its skull bones were fused together, which shows it was mature even though it was small.12
?What did Minqaria eat?
Minqaria was a duck-billed dinosaur, so it ate plants. It had teeth in its jaws for chewing plant material.1
?When did Minqaria live?
Minqaria lived in the very latest Cretaceous period, about 1 million years before the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.1
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For dino experts
- Scientific name
- Minqaria
- Named by
- Longrich et al. 20244
- Group
- Duck-bills
- Family / clade
- Hadrosauridae4
- Classification
- Ornithischia > Ornithopoda > Iguanodontia > Hadrosauridae4
- Age of the rocks
- 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)4
- Rock formations
- Couche III4
- Countries
- Morocco4
- Fossil records
- 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
- Discovery
- Minqaria was named in 2024 by paleontologist Nick Longrich and his team. The fossils were found by local miners in the phosphate mines of Sidi Chennane, Morocco.21
- Still debated
- Scientists are not sure why Minqaria and other African duck-billed dinosaurs were so small, but they think it might be because giant sauropods outcompeted them for food.2
Where the facts come from
- Minqaria (en.wikipedia.org)
- A new small duckbilled dinosaur (Hadrosauridae: Lambeosaurinae) from Morocco and dinosaur diversity in the late Maastrichtian of North Africa (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
- Minqaria in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.
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