Oviraptor philoceratops
Oviraptor was a small, lightly built theropod that walked on two legs and would have looked far more like a big, long-tailed ground bird than like a lizard. It measured roughly 1.6–2 metres from beak to tail tip and weighed an estimated 25–40 kilograms.
Oviraptor
Oviraptor philoceratops
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Weight
25–40 kg
Length
1.6–2 m
Diet
Omnivore
Period
Cretaceous
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25–40 kg
1.6–2 m
Cretaceous
Bipedal
0.7–1 m
35 km/h
Omnivore
One recorded fossil find, in Mongolia. First described in 1924 by Osborn.
Sites and counts from the Paleobiology Database
The timeline shows the whole age of dinosaurs – and how much time has passed since. The glowing part is when Oviraptor lived.
million years ago
Lived 75–71 million years ago
If the whole age of dinosaurs were a single day, Oviraptor lived at 23:06.
Chapter • Meet the dinosaur
Oviraptor was a small, lightly built theropod that walked on two legs and would have looked far more like a big, long-tailed ground bird than like a lizard. It measured roughly 1.6–2 metres from beak to tail tip and weighed an estimated 25–40 kilograms. The skull was short and deep, with powerful jaws that carried no teeth at all and ended in a parrot-like horny beak. A bony crest rose above the snout, although its exact shape is hard to pin down because the only skull we have is crushed flat. Close relatives such as Caudipteryx and Similicaudipteryx preserve true feathers, and Nomingia has a pygostyle – fused tail vertebrae that anchored a fan of feathers. Oviraptor is therefore reconstructed today as fully feathered, with long arm feathers and a feather fan at the end of a stiff tail held horizontally, well clear of the ground.
Chapter • Where it lived
Oviraptor lived about 75–71 million years ago, during the Campanian stage of the Late Cretaceous, in what is now the Gobi Desert of southern Mongolia. The type specimen comes from the Djadokhta Formation at Bayn Dzak, the locality the American Museum expedition nicknamed the Flaming Cliffs after its fiery red sandstone. The landscape was already arid: a semi-desert of shifting dunes with waterholes, seasonal streams and patches of low vegetation. The same beds have produced Protoceratops, Velociraptor, Pinacosaurus and a rich fauna of early mammals. Fossils there are often remarkably complete because animals were buried rapidly by collapsing dune faces or sandstorms.
Chapter • Family life
15–30
Chapter • Wild behavior
Diurnal
Whether Oviraptor lived in groups is unknown, but we know a great deal about how its family treated its nests. Several close relatives in the Oviraptoridae, above all Citipati from Ukhaa Tolgod, have been found as adults that died sitting on their own clutches with the arms spread over the eggs in the posture of a brooding bird. The eggs lie in concentric rings, often in more than one layer, suggesting the female laid two eggs at a time and shuffled around the nest. At some sites several nests occur close together, which may point to colonial nesting – though it could also mean that generations of animals simply favoured the same good spot. Whether these dinosaurs foraged together outside the breeding season is not known.
The name Oviraptor philoceratops means roughly 'egg thief, lover of ceratopsians' – and it was based on a mistake.
Henry Fairfield Osborn, who named the animal in 1924, warned in print that the name might turn out to be misleading.
Oviraptor had no teeth at all, but two short bony prongs on the palate that may have helped crush hard food.
A famous fossil of its relative Citipati shows an adult sitting on its own nest with its arms folded over the eggs, exactly like a brooding bird.
Most museum models and book illustrations labelled 'Oviraptor' actually depict Citipati osmolskae, which was not named until 2001.
The holotype AMNH 6517 was found by George Olsen on 13 July 1923 at the Flaming Cliffs in Mongolia.
Oviraptorid eggs were laid in rings, sometimes stacked in several layers, with 20–30 eggs in a single nest.
Despite the name, Oviraptor was probably an omnivore that ate plants, seeds, shellfish, lizards and small mammals.
Chapter • Scientific place
Natural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum overview of Oviraptor covering its size, anatomy, age, diet and Mongolian occurrence, used as the general reference for the sv, en, da and no description texts.
Open sourcePaleobiology Database
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Paleobiology Database taxon page giving the accepted classification of Oviraptor philoceratops within Theropoda, Oviraptorosauria and Oviraptoridae, with authority and synonymy data.
Open sourceAmerican Museum of Natural History
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Osborn's original 1924 description, which establishes the type specimen's provenance in the Protoceratops zone (Djadokhta Formation) at Bayn Dzak, southern Mongolia.
Open sourcePalaeontologia Polonica (Polish Academy of Sciences)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Detailed sedimentological study of the type locality documenting the arid, aeolian dune and ephemeral-water palaeoenvironment in which Oviraptor lived.
Open sourceScientific Reports (Nature Portfolio)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Peer-reviewed biomechanical analysis of oviraptorosaur jaw musculature and bite force used to infer their omnivorous, hard-food-processing feeding ecology.
Open sourceAmerican Museum Novitates (American Museum of Natural History)
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Extinct taxon; conservation status NE
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum overview of Oviraptor covering its size, anatomy, age, diet and Mongolian occurrence, used as the general reference for the sv, en, da and no description texts.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum overview of Oviraptor covering its size, anatomy, age, diet and Mongolian occurrence, used as the general reference for the sv, en, da and no description texts.
Open sourceNatural History Museum, London
Reviewed: 9/5/2026
Museum overview of Oviraptor covering its size, anatomy, age, diet and Mongolian occurrence, used as the general reference for the sv, en, da and no description texts.
Open source