Caenagnathus

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
- CaenagnathinaePBDB
- Diet
- omnivorePBDB, for Oviraptorosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, depth=surfacePBDB, for Oviraptorosauria
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Oviraptorosauria
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Oviraptorosauria
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 Caenagnathus 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
2 formations
- Dinosaur Park Formation · Belly River Group7
- Hell Creek Formation · Montana Group1
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The named rock units Caenagnathus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Caenagnathus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Caenagnathus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
31 taxa- Chasmosaurus2 sites
- Chirostenotes pergracilis2 sites
- Dromaeosauridae2 sites
- Hadrosauridae2 sites
- Testudinata2 sites
- Albanerpetontidae1 site
- Anura1 site
- Carcharhinidae1 site
- Ceratopsidae1 site
- Citipes elegans1 site
- Edmontosaurus1 site
- Galagadon nordquistae1 site
- Habrosaurus1 site
- Lambeosaurus lambei1 site
- Latenivenatrix mcmasterae1 site
- Leptorhynchos elegans1 site
- Lonchidion selachos1 site
- Metatheria1 site
- Multituberculata1 site
- Myledaphus1 site
- Myledaphus pustulosus1 site
- Neurankylus eximius1 site
- Opisthotriton1 site
- Ornithomimidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Caenagnathus, 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
3 references- New material of the large-bodied caenagnathid Caenagnathus collinsi from the Dinosaur Park Formation of Alberta, Canada5
- New caenagnathid (Dinosauria, Theropoda) specimens from the Upper Cretaceous of North America and Asia2
- A toothless bird from the Cretaceous of Alberta1
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 Caenagnathus
- 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 3D scan of Caenagnathus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCaenagnathinae through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Sternberg 1940