What is Troodontidae?
Troodontidae is a family of slender, long-legged, bird-like theropods with relatively large brains for their body size and large eyes. Members are known from the Jurassic and Cretaceous of Asia and North America.
Exceptionally preserved fossils from China, such as Anchiornis and Mei, show feathers and bird-like postures, which makes the family important for understanding the origin of birds. Many troodontids are known only from fragments, so their diet and behaviour are interpreted from skeletal features.
How this group is defined here
Members are the 5 field notes whose family or immediate parent group in the Paleobiology Database catalogue is Troodontidae. The interpreted diet field across the group is carnivore, based on skeletal features rather than direct observation. Groups are revised when new fossils are described, and some genera are placed here with less certainty than others, so each field note records its sources and limits.
