Mei long

Uncredited · via Wikidata/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
- MeiPBDB
- Diet
- carnivore, omnivorePBDB, for Troodontidae
- Life habit
- ground dwellingPBDB, for Troodontidae
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Troodontidae
Time the record covers
At most 6.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 125.77 Mya and 119.57 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Mei long on record, most of them in the Early 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
2 occurrences- Early 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
1 formation
- Yixian Formation · Jehol Group2
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The named rock units Mei long has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Mei long and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Mei long and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
14 taxa- Dalinghosaurus longidigitus1 site
- Euhelopus1 site
- Gobiconodon zofiae1 site
- Graciliraptor lujiatunensis1 site
- Incisivosaurus gauthieri1 site
- Jeholosaurus shangyuanensis1 site
- Liaoceratops yanzigouensis1 site
- Meemannodon lujiatunensis1 site
- Psittacosaurus lujiatunensis1 site
- Repenomamus giganticus1 site
- Repenomamus robustus1 site
- Sauropoda1 site
- Sinovenator changii1 site
- Sinusonasus magnodens1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Mei long, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
2 references- A second soundly sleeping dragon: new anatomical details of the Chinese troodontid Mei long with implications for phylogeny and taphonomy1
- A new troodontid dinosaur from China with avian-like sleeping posture1
Each of the 2 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1

Picture of Mei long
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
No repository was searched for a 3D scan: the genus name is too short to search on without matching most of the record.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMei through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Xu and Norell 2004