Dino card No. 1173 of 2,015

Microraptor

Say it: MY-kro-rap-tor

Name means: “small seizer”1

Ate: MeatRaptorsEarly Cretaceous

Microraptor was a tiny dinosaur with four wings! It had long feathers on its arms and legs, so it could glide or even fly from tree to tree. This little hunter lived in the forests of ancient China.1

Lived

121 to 113 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Liaoning, China1

Food

Meat1

Length

0.8 to 1.2 m1

Weight

1 kg to 2 kg1

Artist's life restoration of Microraptor — How Microraptor may have looked, by Fred Wierum. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Scientists still argue about colours and details.

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

Microraptor had four wings: one pair on its arms and another on its legs. This helped it glide between trees like a flying squirrel.1

It lived about 125 to 120 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period.1

One fossil of Microraptor had a mammal foot in its stomach. This shows that it sometimes ate small mammals.1

Microraptor was smaller than the earliest bird, Archaeopteryx. It is one of the smallest non-avian dinosaurs ever found.2

Scientists found fish scales inside another Microraptor fossil. This means it could catch fish, maybe by swooping down to the water.1

The first fossil of Microraptor was part of a fake dinosaur made from pieces of different animals. Scientists discovered the trick and named the real dinosaur Microraptor.1

Myth buster

Myth: Some people think Microraptor was a bird because it had four wings and feathers.

Truth: Microraptor was a dinosaur, not a bird. It belongs to a group of meat-eating dinosaurs called dromaeosaurids, which are close relatives of birds.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Microraptor
Named by: Xu et al. 20003
Group: Raptors
Family / clade: Dromaeosauridae3
Classification: Theropoda > Dromaeosauridae3
Age of the rocks: 121 to 113 million years (Aptian)3
Rock formations: Jiufotang3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 10 in the Paleobiology Database3
Also known as: Archaeoraptor, Cryptovolans (older names now counted as the same animal)3
Discovery: Microraptor was named in 2000 by Xu Xing and his team. They described it from a fossil found in the Jiufotang Formation in Liaoning, China.3 2
Still debated: Scientists are still debating whether Microraptor could truly fly or only glide. Some studies suggest it could flap its wings and fly short distances.1

Where the facts come from

Microraptor (en.wikipedia.org)
The smallest known non-avian theropod dinosaur | Nature (nature.com)
Microraptor 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 hello@dinowiki.app and we will fix it.