Mei (dinosaur)
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| Mei long Xu & Norell, 2004 |
Mei (from Chinese 寐 mèi soundly sleeping) is a genus of duck-sized troodontid dinosaur first unearthed by paleontologists in Liaoning, China in 2004. Mei lived during the Early Cretaceous Period. Its binomial name, Mei long (Chinese 寐 mèi and 龙 lóng) means dragon soundly sleeping.
Some of the unearthed fossils from the site, preserved in three-dimensional detail, were found with their faces nestled behind one of their forelimbs, similar to the sleeping position of modern birds. The fossil provides a behavioral link between birds and dinosaurs. Mei has the shortest genus name of any dinosaur, surpassing the previous record-holders Minmi, an ankylosaur discovered in Australia, and Khaan, an oviraptorid from Mongolia.
