🦖 Dinosaurs🦖 TheropodJurassicLesser known
Guanlong
Guanlong wucaii
Guanlong helps reconstruct the early evolutionary history of tyrannosauroids, long before Tyrannosaurus rex.
Image: Jonathan Chen · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Guanlong wucaii
- Period
- Late Jurassic (Oxfordian)
- Lived
- 160–158 Ma (160 million years ago)
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Habitat
- Forest, Plains
- Length (estimate)
- 3 m
- Mass (estimate)
- 100 kg
Description
Guanlong was a small early tyrannosauroid with a prominent hollow crest on its snout. The crest was fragile and probably used mainly for recognition or display, not combat. Its long hind legs and sharp teeth indicate an active hunter of small animals. Two known skeletons, one juvenile and one adult, provide evidence about growth.
Habitat
River and woodland landscapes in what is now north-western China.
Fossil sites
Wucaiwan, Xinjiang
Shishugou Formation
Cultural profile: China →
Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Guanlong