In Depth
Nemegtomaia was originally named Nemegtia in 2004, but it was soon realised that this name had already been used to name another animal. So in 2005 the describers renamed it Nemegtomaia to avoid confusion. Nemegtomaia is a genus of oviraptorid dinosaur that lived in what is now Mongolia during the late Cretaceous. At a little over one meter in length, Nemegtomaia was actually within the smaller end of the scale for an oviraptosaur. Like with other oviraptosaurs, we can be sure that Nemegtomaia would have had feathers covering most to all of its body, but we cannot be certain about what it ate, because the beak like mouth would have been useful for feeding upon either small animals and/or plants. Nemegtomaia has a noted similarity to the genus Citipati, though there is no question that the two are separate genera.
Further Reading
- New oviraptorid dinosaur (Dinosauria: Oviraptorosauria) from the Nemegt Formation of southwestern Mongolia. - Bulletin of the National Science Museum, Tokyo, Series C 30: 95-130. - J. L�, Y. Tomida, Y. Azuma, Z. Dong & Y.-N. Lee - 2004. - Nemegtomaia gen. nov., a replacement name for the oviraptorosaurian dinosaur Nemegtia L� et al., 2004, a preoccupied name. Bulletin of the National Science Museum, Tokyo, Series C 31:51 - J. L�, Y. Tomida, Y. Azuma, Z. Dong & Y.-N. Lee - 2005. - New Specimens of Nemegtomaia from the Baruungoyot and Nemegt Formations (Late Cretaceous) of Mongolia - PLoS ONE, 7(2 - Federico Fanti, Philip J. Currie & Demchig Badamgarav - 2012.
