Nedcolbertia
Nedcolbertia was a small, fast meat-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now Utah during the Early Cretaceous. It ran on two legs and had a big thumb claw for grabbing prey.14
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Fun facts
Nedcolbertia is named after famous paleontologist Edwin Harris Colbert, who was called Ned by his friends.1
The species name justinhofmanni honors a six-year-old boy who won a dinosaur-naming contest.1
Three partial skeletons of Nedcolbertia were found in 1993 near Cisco, Utah, in the Cedar Mountain Formation.1
The fossils were disarticulated and heavily eroded because they had been lying on the ground before discovery.1
Nedcolbertia had a thumb claw that was much larger than the other hand claws, which it may have used to catch prey.1
Scientists are not sure exactly what group of theropods Nedcolbertia belongs to. Some think it was an ornithomimosaur, others think it was an allosauroid or megalosauroid.1
Most asked questions about Nedcolbertia
?How big was Nedcolbertia?
About 1.5 metres (4 ft 11 in) long for the juvenile holotype, and about 3 metres (9.8 ft) for the subadult paratypes.1
?What did Nedcolbertia eat?
It was a meat-eating dinosaur, so it ate other animals. It had a big thumb claw that it may have used to grab prey.1
?Is Nedcolbertia an ornithomimosaur?
Scientists are not sure. Some studies say it was an ornithomimosaur (an ostrich dinosaur), but others think it might be an allosauroid or megalosauroid.13
?When did Nedcolbertia live?
It lived during the Early Cretaceous, about 136 to 130 million years ago (Valanginian age).1
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For dino experts
- Scientific name
- Nedcolbertia
- Named by
- Kirkland et al. 19984
- Group
- Meat-eating dinos
- Family / clade
- Coelurosauria4
- Classification
- Theropoda4
- Age of the rocks
- 137 to 133 million years (Valanginian)4
- Rock formations
- Cedar Mountain4
- Countries
- USA4
- Fossil records
- 2 in the Paleobiology Database4
- Discovery
- Nedcolbertia was named in 1998 by Kirkland, Whittle, Britt, Madsen, and Burge. The fossils were found in 1993 by Christopher Whittle in Utah.1
- Still debated
- Scientists still debate whether Nedcolbertia was an ornithomimosaur, an allosauroid, or a megalosauroid.1
Where the facts come from
- Nedcolbertia (en.wikipedia.org)
- Nedcolbertia justinhoffmanni | Dinosaur Database by DinoAnimals.com (dinoanimals.com)
- PeerJ Description of Arundel Clay ornithomimosaur material and a reinterpretation of Nedcolbertia justinhofmanni as an “Ostrich Dinosaur”: biogeographic implications (peerj.com)
- Nedcolbertia in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.
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