Caudipteryx (meaning "tail feather") is a genus of small oviraptorosaur dinosaurs that lived in Asia during the Early Cretaceous, around 124.6 million years ago.

Caudipteryx was erected with the type species C. zoui and the holotype is NGMC 97-4-A, a nearly complete individual preserving conspicuous feather impressions and gastroliths.

The generic name, Caudipteryx, means "tail feather", and the specific name, zoui, is in honor of Zou Jiahua for his prominent support to the scientific community as the vice premier of China.

[1] Around the summer of 1988, a partially complete skeleton of Caudipteryx lacking the skull was found in sediments of the "Layer 6" of the Yixian Formation, at the Zhangjiagou locality, which is set apart 3 km (1.9 mi) from Sihetun.

[4] In 2021 Xiaoting Zheng and team described STM4-3 representing an articulated individual lacking the skull and tail tip, including abundant integument, gastroliths, but also a cartilage fragment that was reported to preserve chondrocytes.

[8] Caudipteryx had uncinate processes on the ribs, birdlike teeth, a first toe which may or may not be partially reversed and overall body proportions that are comparable to those of modern flightless birds.

[1][2][7][3][9] The hands of Caudipteryx supported symmetrical, pennaceous feathers that had vanes and barbs, measuring between 15 and 20 centimetres (5.9 and 7.9 inches) long.

[11] The consensus view, based on several cladistic analyses, is that Caudipteryx is a basal (primitive) member of the Oviraptorosauria, and the oviraptorosaurians are non-avian theropod dinosaurs.

[20] Protarchaeopteryx Incisivosaurus Similicaudipteryx Avimimus Microvenator Caudipteryx Chirostenotes Gigantoraptor Oviraptor Citipati Khaan Because Caudipteryx has clear and unambiguously pennaceous feathers, like modern birds, and because several cladistic analyses have consistently recovered it as a non-avian oviraptorid dinosaur, it provided, at the time of its description, the clearest and most succinct evidence that birds evolved from dinosaurs.

Fringe ornithologist Alan Feduccia sees Caudipteryx as a flightless bird evolving from earlier archosaurian dinosaurs rather than from late theropods.