Gallimimus Dinosaur Facts

The Gallimimus is the largest known dinosaurs of the ornithomimids, or dinosaur "imitating the birds". It was one of the greatest discoveries of the Mongolian-Polish expeditions of the 1960s in Mongolia. Skeletons of animals arrived at different stages of growth. The largest of these animals was 3 m long. It should nevertheless be noted that its neck and tail were two-thirds of its size. Its head was rather small and its jaw did not have teeth like other ornithomimids. Its limbs and neck were fine and very long, the bones of the hand, the metacarpals, were also very long. Those of the thumb were even longer than most theropods where the thumb is much shorter than the other fingers. We believe that Gallimimus and other ornithomimids were capable of speed spikes, and were represented as very fast animals in Jurassic Park. Their arms had great freedom of movement without them being able to go very high. To make up for it, their long neck could probably stretch out so that food could be brought to the mouth. The Gallimimus diet certainly contained small animals, perhaps insects or plants. Its hands, more suitable for digging than for grasping, could also pick up the buried eggs left by the other dinosaurs that he then opened with its wide beak placed at the end of its long snout. Mongolian ornithomimids such as Gallimimus are usually found with large tyrannosaurid theropods and duck-billed dinosaurs, but not with horned ceratopsians. In contrast, North American ornithomimids are more often found with different ceratopsians. This suggests that the North American and Asian members of this group did not live in the same conditions, but these differences are still unknown to us.