Yi

Say it: YEE

Name means: “strange wing”1

Ate: MeatMeat-eating dinosMiddle Jurassic to Late Jurassic

Yi was a tiny dinosaur that lived about 160 million years ago. It had wings made of skin, like a bat, instead of feathers like a bird. Yi could glide from tree to tree in the forests of ancient China.2 1

Lived

165 to 155 million years ago3

Middle Jurassic to Late Jurassic

Fossils found in

Hebei Province, China1 2

Food

Meat3 1

Weight

0.38 kg1

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 3 bananas

lighter than a house cat

How big was Yi compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Yi had a long, rod-like bone sticking out from each wrist. This bone helped support a skin membrane that made up its wing.2 1

Yi's wings were different from any other dinosaur. They were made of skin, like a bat's wing, not feathers like a bird's.2 1

Yi weighed only about 380 grams (0.84 pounds), which is less than a can of soda.1

The only fossil of Yi was found by a farmer named Wang Jianrong in a quarry near Mutoudeng Village, China.1

Yi had a short, blunt snout and only a few teeth at the front of its jaws. The front teeth pointed slightly forward.1

Yi's third finger was the longest on its hand, which helped support its wing membrane.1

Yi lived in a warm, humid forest with ginkgo trees, conifers, and ferns, near lakes and active volcanoes.1

AI-made picture of Yi — An AI-made picture of how Yi 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: Yi
Named by: Xu et al. 20153
Group: Meat-eating dinos
Family / clade: Scansoriopterygidae3
Classification: Theropoda3
Age of the rocks: 165 to 155 million years (Callovian / Oxfordian)3
Rock formations: Tiaojishan3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Yi was named in 2015 by a team led by Xu Xing. The only fossil was bought by the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in 2007 and prepared by museum staff.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure if the rod-like wrist bone was a new bone or a hardened piece of cartilage.1

Where the facts come from

Yi (dinosaur) (en.wikipedia.org)
A bizarre Jurassic maniraptoran theropod with preserved evidence of membranous wings | Nature (nature.com)
Yi 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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