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Caenagnathasia, Late CretaceousBissekty Formation, Uzbekistan · named 1994
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Caenagnathasia

"recent jaw from Asia"

Lived
94 to 72 million years ago, Late Cretaceous
Diet
Omnivore
Group
Theropods, Caenagnathidae
Found in
Uzbekistan and China
Named by
Currie et al. 1994

Where its fossils were found

The evidence

Today

7 finds

80 million years ago

Map: C. R. Scotese, PALEOMAP

Habitat

A river floodplain in what is now Uzbekistan. Timurlengia and Turanoceratops lived in the Bissekty Formation landscape.

Field notes

About Caenagnathasia

What it was like

Caenagnathasia was a small feathered oviraptor relative, known from toothless lower jaws and other bones. It was one of the smallest members of its family.

Its world

It lived in the Late Cretaceous in what is now Uzbekistan, with more finds from China. Its bones come from the Bissekty Formation, where it shared the land with the tyrannosaur relative Timurlengia and the horned Turanoceratops.

How it was found

Currie and colleagues named Caenagnathasia in 1994. Seven finds are known.

Field gallery

More views of Caenagnathasia

Scenes reconstructed from the available fossil evidence.

Caenagnathasia in its habitat, photo 1

1 of 3

Lived alongside

Found in the same rock formations

A rock formation can hold fossils laid down millions of years apart, so not every animal here met Caenagnathasia.

The evidence

The science behind Caenagnathasia

Which parts of the picture come from its own bones, and which come from its relatives.

From its own fossils

  • Small toothless lower jaws from Uzbekistan, fused together at the front, are the type material. A jaw tip from China is assigned to Caenagnathasia without being named to a species.
  • The lower jaws have a shelf along their inner edge, and scans of the Chinese jaw tip show grooves and channels for blood vessels inside it.
  • A third jaw referred to it from Uzbekistan has a marked chin-like bump that the type jaws lack. Vertebrae and part of a thighbone are provisionally assigned to it because it is the only oviraptorosaur known from those rocks.

Borrowed from relatives

  • The missing upper beak, eyes and neck are restored by comparison with Anzu, a relative from the same family.
  • The feathered arms are restored by comparison with relatives such as Apatoraptor, whose forearm bones have feather attachment bumps.
  • A feather covering follows other feathered oviraptorosaurs such as Caudipteryx.

Still unknown

  • Its upper jaw and complete skull shape.
  • Whether tiny spaces inside its jaw are traces of lost teeth. One study proposed it, and a later study of jaw bone tissue disagreed.
  • Exactly which foods it ate.

Discovery timeline

  1. 1994Named itCurrie, Godfrey & Nessov
  2. 2015New findSues & Averianov
  3. 2016Close relativeFunston & Currie
  4. 2018SkullWang, Zhang & Yang
  5. 2019Inside the bonesFunston et al.

Key papers

The research behind what we know of Caenagnathasia

Close relatives

Other members of Caenagnathidae

Sources: Wikidata