🦖 Dinosaurs🦖 TheropodCretaceousWell known
Sinosauropteryx
Sinosauropteryx prima
In 1996 it became the first dinosaur outside the birds found with feathers – the start of a revolution in how we see dinosaurs.
Image: Sam / Olai Ose / Skjaervoy from Zhangjiagang, China · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Sinosauropteryx prima
- Period
- Early Cretaceous (Barremian–Aptian)
- Lived
- 125–122 Ma (125 million years ago)
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Habitat
- Forest
- Length (estimate)
- 1 m
- Mass (estimate)
- 0.55 kg
- Discovered/described
- 1996 · Ji Qiang and Ji Shu'an (description)
Description
Sinosauropteryx was a small, long-tailed predatory dinosaur covered in a coat of simple, hair-like feathers. Preserved pigment structures point to a dark back with a lighter belly (countershading) and a banded tail. One specimen had a lizard in its belly, its last meal.
Habitat
Forests around lakes in a volcanic landscape in north-eastern China.
Fossil sites
Sihetun, Liaoning
Yixian Formation
Cultural profile: China →
Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Sinosauropteryx