Gobipipus

Gobi chick

• Gobi · Mongolian · the Gobi Desert, where the fossil was found
• pipus · Latin · chick, young bird (from pipio)

The name combines "Gobi", the desert in Mongolia where the fossil was found, with a Latin root meaning a chirping young bird or chick. It refers to the fact that the type specimen is an embryo, still inside its egg. The species name G. reshetovi honours the Russian ornithologist Reshetov.

Named by

Kurochkin and Bakhurina

Year named

1996

Period

Late Cretaceous

Stage

Campanian

Found in

Barun Goyot Formation, Gobi Desert, Mongolia

Known from an enantiornithine bird embryo, so it belongs to the avian dinosaurs. Later work (e.g. Chiappe and colleagues, 2001) treated these embryonic remains as belonging to Gobipteryx, making Gobipipus a junior synonym. The synonymy, the formation, the stage and the etymology of "pipus" should be checked against a primary source. The pronunciation is left out because I'm not sure of it.