Niebla

Say it: nee-EB-lah

Name means: “mist, from the Spanish word for fog”1

Ate: MeatMeat-eating dinosLate Cretaceous

Niebla was a medium-sized meat-eating dinosaur that lived in what is now Argentina. It was about the length of a small car and hunted other animals during the Late Cretaceous period.1

Lived

72 to 66 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Río Negro province, northern Patagonia, Argentina1 2

Food

Meat3

Length

4 to 4.5 m1

Weight

500 kg to 700 kg2

estimate

Height

1.5 to 1.8 m2

hip height estimate

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How tall was it?

hip height estimate

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 23 big dogs

as long as 4 dogs nose to tailas long as 25 bananas end to endas heavy as 140 watermelonsabout as tall as a door

How big was Niebla compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Niebla is one of the smallest abelisaurids known, even though the only fossil found was from an adult that was at least nine years old.1 2

Its name comes from the Spanish word for 'mist' because the scientists who dug it up worked on foggy days.1

Niebla had a shoulder blade very similar to Carnotaurus, another abelisaurid, with a narrow and straight blade.1

The only known Niebla fossil includes a nearly complete braincase, part of the jaw, teeth, and shoulder bones.1

Niebla lived alongside many other dinosaurs, such as the sauropod Rocasaurus and the ankylosaur Patagopelta.1

Scientists think Niebla was one of the most advanced or 'derived' abelisaurids, meaning it evolved later in the group's history.1

AI-made picture of Niebla — An AI-made picture of how Niebla 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: Niebla
Named by: Aranciaga Rolando et al. 20213
Group: Meat-eating dinos
Family / clade: Abelisauridae3
Classification: Theropoda > Ceratosauria > Abelisauridae3
Age of the rocks: 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)3
Rock formations: Allen3
Countries: Argentina3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Niebla was named in 2021 by a team of scientists led by Mauro Aranciaga Rolando. The only fossil was found at Matadero Hill, 70 km south of General Roca in Argentina.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how big Niebla was because only a partial skeleton has been found. The length estimate of 4 to 4.5 metres is based on comparisons with related dinosaurs.1

Where the facts come from

Niebla antiqua (en.wikipedia.org)
A new medium-sized abelisaurid (Theropoda, Dinosauria) from the late cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Allen Formation of Northern Patagonia, Argentina (sciencedirect.com)
Niebla 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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