Wulatelong

Say it: WOO-lah-tuh-long

Name means: “Wulate dragon, after the Wulate area where it was found”1

Ate: A bit of everythingOdd feathered dinosLate Cretaceous

Wulatelong was a bird-like dinosaur with a toothless, parrot-like beak. It lived in the Late Cretaceous period, about 83 to 72 million years ago, in what is now China. It probably used its beak to eat plants and small animals.1 5

Lived

84 to 72 million years ago5

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Bayan Mandahu, Inner Mongolia, China1 5

Food

A bit of everything5 1

Weight

29 kg3 4

estimate based on femoral length

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 7 house cats

as heavy as 6 watermelons

How big was Wulatelong compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

cool stuff

Fun facts

Wulatelong had a toothless, parrot-like beak, which is unusual for a theropod dinosaur.1

It is known from a nearly complete skeleton, which is rare for oviraptorid dinosaurs.1

Wulatelong lived alongside famous dinosaurs like Velociraptor and Protoceratops.1

Its name comes from the Wulate area in China, where it was found, and 'long' means dragon in Chinese.1

Scientists think Wulatelong was a basal oviraptorid, meaning it was one of the earlier members of its group.1 2

The fossils were found in rocks that are between 83 and 72 million years old, from the Campanian stage.1 5

AI-made picture of Wulatelong — An AI-made picture of how Wulatelong 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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Myth buster

Myth: Some people think Wulatelong was a bird because it had feathers and a beak.

Truth: Wulatelong was a dinosaur, not a bird, even though it was bird-like and related to birds.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Wulatelong
Named by: Xu et al. 20135
Group: Odd feathered dinos
Family / clade: Oviraptoridae5
Classification: Theropoda > Oviraptorosauria5
Age of the rocks: 84 to 72 million years (Campanian)5
Rock formations: Wulansuhai5
Countries: China5
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database5
Discovery: The fossils were discovered in 2009 in the Bayan Mandahu area of Inner Mongolia, China. It was named by Xu Xing and colleagues in 2013.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are still debating whether Wulatelong was more closely related to other oviraptorids or to more basal oviraptorosaurs.1 2

Where the facts come from

Wulatelong (en.wikipedia.org)
A new oviraptorid from the Upper Cretaceous of Nei Mongol, China, and its stratigraphic implications (vertpala.ac.cn)
A New Oviraptorid Dinosaur:<em>Wulatelong gobiensis</em>----Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (english.ivpp.cas.cn)
A new oviraptorid from the Upper Cretaceous of Nei Mongol, China, and its stratigraphic implications (ivpp.cas.cn)
Wulatelong in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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