Xiaotingia

Named for Zheng Xiaoting ("Xiaoting's [animal]")

• Xiaoting · Chinese (personal name) · given name of Zheng Xiaoting, the person honoured
• -ia · Latin · genus-name suffix

Xiaotingia was named in honour of Zheng Xiaoting, a Chinese museum founder (Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature) who has supported and helped assemble important feathered-dinosaur fossils from China. The Latin-style ending -ia was added to his given name to form the genus name. The only species is Xiaotingia zhengi, which honours him again with his family name.

Named by

Xu et al.

Year named

2011

Period

Late Jurassic

Stage

Oxfordian

Found in

Tiaojishan Formation, Liaoning Province, China

A small, feathered, bird-like theropod. When described in 2011, its original analysis placed it among the Archaeopterygidae, close to the origin of birds, and suggested Archaeopteryx might be a deinonychosaur rather than an early bird. Later analyses have generally not supported this and often place it with the anchiornithines (such as Anchiornis), and some researchers consider it close to or possibly a synonym of Anchiornis.