Dino card No. 1939 of 2,027

Xiaotingia

Say it: zhow-TING-ee-uh

Name means: “named in honour of Zheng Xiaoting, who helped build the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature”1

Ate: MeatRaptorsMiddle Jurassic to Late Jurassic

Xiaotingia was a small, feathered dinosaur that lived about 160 million years ago. It looked a lot like Archaeopteryx, the famous 'first bird', and scientists are still arguing about whether it was a bird or a raptor.2 3

Lived

168 to 152 million years ago5

Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic

Fossils found in

Linglongta, Jianchang, western Liaoning, China1

Food

Meat3

Length

0.6 m4

body length

Weight

0.82 kg1 4

estimate

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 7 bananas

as long as 3 bananas end to endlighter than a house catas heavy as 7 bananas

How big was Xiaotingia compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Xiaotingia had long, strong arms and hands, which scientists used to think were special bird features, but they are actually found in a bigger group called Paraves.2

When Xiaotingia was added to the family tree, it made Archaeopteryx move from being a bird to being a raptor, which surprised many scientists.2

Xiaotingia had a large hole in its lower jaw, called a surangular foramen, that was more than 6% of the total jaw length.1

Its fourth finger bone (metacarpal IV) was thicker than the second and third, which is unusual.1

Xiaotingia shared some features with troodontids, like closely packed teeth in the front of the jaw and long, slender tail bones.1

The only known fossil was bought from a fossil dealer, so scientists are not 100% sure exactly which rock layer it came from.1

AI-made picture of Xiaotingia — An AI-made picture of how Xiaotingia 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: Xiaotingia is a bird because it looks like Archaeopteryx.

Truth: Scientists disagree. Some think Xiaotingia is a raptor (a deinonychosaur), not a bird, because it shares many features with raptors.2

For dino experts

Scientific name: Xiaotingia
Named by: Xu et al. 20115
Group: Raptors
Family / clade: Troodontidae5
Classification: Theropoda > Troodontidae5
Age of the rocks: 168 to 152 million years (Bathonian / Kimmeridgian)5
Rock formations: Tiaojishan5
Countries: China5
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database5
Discovery: Xiaotingia was named in 2011 by Xu Xing and colleagues. The only skeleton was bought by the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature from a fossil dealer who said it came from Liaoning, China.1
Still debated: Scientists still debate whether Xiaotingia was a bird or a raptor, and even the exact age of the fossil is uncertain because the dealer could not say which quarry it came from.2 1

Where the facts come from

ivpp.cas.cn (ivpp.cas.cn)
An Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China and the origin of Avialae | Nature (nature.com)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Xiaotingia (en.wikipedia.org)
Xiaotingia 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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