''Sinornithomimus'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of ornithomimid that lived in

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an are ...

during the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

period. The first remains were found in 1997, in the

strata of the

Ulansuhai Formation The Ulansuhai Formation () is a geological formation in Inner Mongolia, north China. Dinosaur remains are among the fossils that have been recovered from the formation.Weishampel, David B; et al. (2004). "Dinosaur distribution (Early Cretaceous, As ...

located at Alshanzuo Banner,

Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region Inner Mongolia, officially the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China. Its border includes most of the length of China's border with the country of Mongolia. Inner Mongolia also accounts for a ...

, Northern China.

Discovery and naming

The first

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

remains of ''Sinornithomimus'' were uncovered by

Dong Zhiming Dong Zhiming (Chinese: 董枝明, Pinyin: ''Dǒng Zhimíng''; born January 1937) is a Chinese vertebrate paleontologist formerly employed at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) in Beijing. He began working at th ...

in the

as part of the Mongol Highland International Dinosaur Project in 1997. They contained at least fourteen skeletons found in close association, nine of which are nearly complete and relatively uncrushed. The find consisted of three sub-adult to adult specimens and eleven juveniles. The unweathered state of the bones, preserved in siltstone interspersed with layers of

clay Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolin, Al2 Si2 O5( OH)4). Clays develop plasticity when wet, due to a molecular film of water surrounding the clay par ...

and the absence of evidence for post-mortem movement, argue for a catastrophic event that killed all the individuals present in the find simultaneously and instantaneously. The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specime ...

''Sinornithomimus dongi'' was named and described by

Yoshitsugu Kobayashi {{Short pages monitor