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Tawa

Say it: TAH-wah
Name means: “Hopi word for the Puebloan sun god”1
Ate: MeatFirst dinosaursLate Triassic

Tawa was a small, fast dinosaur that lived about 215 million years ago in what is now New Mexico. It had a slender body and a kink in its upper jaw, and it may have been one of the earliest meat-eating dinosaurs.1

Lived
227 to 206 million years ago2
Late Triassic
Fossils found in
New Mexico, USA12
Food
Meat1
Length
2.5 m1
adult estimate
Weight
15 kg1
Top speed
about 41 km/h (25 mph)
Running, estimate

When did it live?

Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

Tawa about 2.5 m longA dog about 1 mA bicycle about 1.8 mA car about 4.5 m

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 4 house cats
as long as 2.5 dogs nose to tailas long as 14 bananas end to endas heavy as 120 bananas

How big was Tawa compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Tawa's fossils were discovered at the Hayden Quarry in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, starting in 2004.1

2

The name Tawa comes from the Hopi word for the sun god, and the species name hallae honors Ruth Hall, founder of the Ghost Ranch Museum of Paleontology.1

3

Tawa had a kink in its upper jaw, between the maxilla and premaxilla, similar to some other early theropods.1

4

Scientists think Tawa helps show that the earliest dinosaurs evolved in South America and then spread across the supercontinent Pangaea.1

5

The holotype specimen of Tawa is a juvenile, with an open braincase and unfused bones.1

6

An isolated femur suggests that adult Tawa could be at least 30% larger than the juvenile holotype.1

AI-madeAI-made picture of Tawa
An AI-made picture of how Tawa might have looked, made by a computer from what scientists know. It is a guess: the real animal may have looked different, and nobody knows its true colours.

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For dino experts

Scientific name
Tawa
Named by
Nesbitt et al. 20092
Group
First dinosaurs
Family / clade
Saurischia2
Age of the rocks
227 to 206 million years (Norian)2
Rock formations
Chinle2
Countries
USA2
Fossil records
3 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery
Tawa was first described in 2009 by a team led by Sterling J. Nesbitt, based on fossils found in New Mexico.1
Still debated
Scientists debate whether Tawa is a true theropod or a more basal saurischian, and whether it belongs to the group Coelophysoidea.1

Where the facts come from

  1. Tawa hallae (en.wikipedia.org)
  2. Tawa in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

Every fact on this page has a number that points to its source. If we got something wrong, sorry, we are dino fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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