Avimimus
Avimimus, meaning "bird mimic", is a genus of oviraptorosaurian theropod dinosaur, named for its bird-like characteristics, that lived in the late Cretaceous in what is now Mongolia, during the Maastrichtian.

★Kumiko★ · CC BY-SA 2.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- OviraptorosauriaPBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Oviraptorosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, depth=surfacePBDB, for Oviraptorosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Oviraptorosauria
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Oviraptorosauria
- Length
- 1.5 mWikidata
Time the record covers
At most 18 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 83.6 Mya and 66 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
8 occurrences of Avimimus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
8 occurrences- Late Cretaceous100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
4 formations
- Nemegt Formation5
- Baruungoyot Formation1
- Dinosaur Park Formation · Belly River Group1
- Djadokhta Formation1
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The named rock units Avimimus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Avimimus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Avimimus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
46 taxa- Bivalvia2 sites
- Dendroolithidae2 sites
- Gallimimus2 sites
- Mongolemys2 sites
- Sauropoda2 sites
- Spheroolithidae2 sites
- Testudinata2 sites
- Theropoda2 sites
- Ankylosauria1 site
- Ankylosauridae1 site
- Artzosuchus brachicephalus1 site
- Asiatherium reshetovi1 site
- Carnosauria1 site
- Crocodylia1 site
- Deinocheirus mirificus1 site
- Dromaeosauridae1 site
- Elmisaurus1 site
- Elmisaurus rarus1 site
- Elongatoolithidae1 site
- Elongatoolithus1 site
- Elongatoolithus subtitectorius1 site
- Gastropoda1 site
- Gobiates1 site
- Gobiosuchus parvus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Avimimus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
6 references- New information on the cranial morphology of Avimimus (Theropoda: Oviraptorosauria)2
- O neobuchnykh teropodakh iz verkhnego mela MNR [An unusual theropod from the Upper Cretaceous of Mongolia]2
- New protoceratopsid specimens improve the age correlation of the Upper Cretaceous Gobi Desert strata1
- Oviraptorosaur anatomy, diversity and ecology in the Nemegt Basin1
- Dinosaur footprints from the Upper Cretaceous of Mongolia1
- Dinosaurs of Alberta (exclusive of Aves)1
Each of the 8 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Avimimus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- ★Kumiko★
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 2.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Avimimus was found in Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Avimimus”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itOviraptorosauria through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kurzanov 1981