Yulong

Say it: YOO-long MIN-ee

Name means: “mini dragon from Henan”1

Ate: A bit of everythingOdd feathered dinosLate Cretaceous

Yulong was a tiny, chicken-sized dinosaur that lived in what is now China. It had a beak and probably ate plants and small animals. Some of the smallest oviraptorid dinosaurs ever found belong to this species.1 2

Lived

72 to 66 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Henan Province, central China (Qiupa Formation)1 2

Food

A bit of everything3 1

Length

0.25 to 0.5 m1

most specimens are juveniles

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 3 bananas end to end

How big was Yulong compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Yulong is known from several juvenile skeletons and even an embryo inside an egg, making it one of the best-known baby oviraptorids.1

The name Yulong comes from 'Yu', the short name for Henan Province, and 'long', meaning dragon in Chinese.1

Most Yulong individuals were only 25 to 50 centimetres long, about the size of a chicken.1

Scientists think Yulong was more advanced than the giant oviraptorid Gigantoraptor, but its exact family tree is still uncertain.1

One nest of 26 eggs was found, and one of the eggs contained a well-preserved Yulong embryo.1

Yulong lived during the very end of the Age of Dinosaurs, about 72 to 66 million years ago.3

AI-made picture of Yulong — An AI-made picture of how Yulong 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: Yulong
Named by: Lü et al. 20133
Group: Odd feathered dinos
Family / clade: Oviraptoridae3
Classification: Theropoda > Oviraptorosauria3
Age of the rocks: 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)3
Rock formations: Qiupa3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Yulong was named in 2013 by Junchang Lü and colleagues based on five juvenile skeletons found near Qiupa Town in Henan, China.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly where Yulong fits on the oviraptorid family tree, because the known specimens are mostly young and may look more primitive than adults.1

Where the facts come from

Yulong mini (en.wikipedia.org)
PaleoCodex :: Yulong (paleocodex.com)
Yulong 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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