Nemegtonykus
Nemegtonykus was a small, speedy dinosaur that ran on long legs and used its strong claws to dig for food. It lived in what is now the Gobi Desert in Mongolia, about 72 to 66 million years ago.41
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about as heavy as a house cat🍌as heavy as 28 bananas🏃could run 100 metres in 13 seconds (the fastest human needs 9.6)How big was Nemegtonykus compared to YOU?
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Fun facts
Nemegtonykus had very short arms with one big claw on each hand, like other alvarezsaurs.1
Its name means 'swift claw' because scientists think it was a fast runner.1
Three Nemegtonykus individuals were found together with several oviraptorid skeletons in a small area less than half a square metre.1
Its leg bones were fused in a special way, which made its feet strong for running.1
Scientists think Nemegtonykus was more common in its ecosystem than previously thought, because so many fossils were found in one spot.1
Most asked questions about Nemegtonykus
?How big was Nemegtonykus?
It was a moderate-sized alvarezsaurid, but no exact length or weight is given in the sources. The holotype includes a partial skeleton without the skull, so its full size is not precisely known.32
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For dino experts
- Scientific name
- Nemegtonykus
- Named by
- Lee et al. 20194
- Group
- Meat-eating dinos
- Family / clade
- Alvarezsauroidea4
- Classification
- Theropoda4
- Age of the rocks
- 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)4
- Rock formations
- Nemegt4
- Countries
- Mongolia4
- Fossil records
- 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
- Discovery
- Nemegtonykus was named in 2019 by a team of Korean and Mongolian scientists who found its fossils in 2008 during the Korea-Mongolia International Dinosaur Expedition.1
- Still debated
- Scientists are still debating exactly how Nemegtonykus and other alvarezsaurs are related to other dinosaurs, and whether they used their claws for digging or for other purposes.1
Where the facts come from
- A new alvarezsaurid dinosaur from the Nemegt Formation of Mongolia (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
- A new alvarezsaurid dinosaur from the Nemegt Formation of Mongolia | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
- Nemegtonykus (en.wikipedia.org)
- Nemegtonykus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.
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