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Neimengornis

Say it: NYE-meng-GORN-iss

Name means: “Inner Mongolia bird”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Neimengornis was a bird-like dinosaur that lived about 120 million years ago. It had a long bony tail made of many tiny bones, and it could fly. It lived in what is now China.2 3

Lived

121 to 113 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Dapingfang, Liaoning Province, China3

Food

Meat3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Neimengornis had a long tail made of about 28 separate bones, which is unusual for early birds.2

Its name means 'straight minor metacarpal' because one of its hand bones was unusually straight.1

This animal lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 121 to 113 million years ago.3

Only one fossil of Neimengornis has been found, and it is kept at the Inner Mongolia Natural History Museum.1

Neimengornis belonged to a group called jeholornithiforms, which were early bird-like dinosaurs with long tails.2

AI-made picture of Neimengornis — An AI-made picture of how Neimengornis 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: Neimengornis
Named by: Wang et al. 20213
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Jeholornithiformes3
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae3
Age of the rocks: 121 to 113 million years (Aptian)3
Rock formations: Jiufotang3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Neimengornis was named in 2021 by Wang Junyou and colleagues based on a single skeleton found in the Jiufotang Formation of Liaoning, China.3 1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Neimengornis is related to other early birds and bird-like dinosaurs.2

Where the facts come from

Neimengornis (en.wikipedia.org)
A new jeholornithiform identified from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation in western Liaoning (dzhtb.cgs.cn)
Neimengornis in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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