Dino card No. 0179 of 2,027

Asiahesperornis

Say it: AY-zhee-uh-hes-per-OR-nis

Name means: “Asian Hesperornis, meaning western bird from Asia”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsLate Cretaceous

Asiahesperornis was a flightless diving bird that lived in the Late Cretaceous seas. It had teeth in its beak and used its feet to swim underwater, just like a modern loon. It was a fierce hunter of fish and other sea creatures.1 2

Lived

84 to 66 million years ago2

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Kazakhstan and Russia, near the ancient Turgai Sea1 2

Food

Meat2

Length

1 to 1.5 m2

estimated from related hesperornithids

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 3 house cats nose to tailas long as 8 bananas end to end

How big was Asiahesperornis compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Asiahesperornis was a flightless bird, but it was an excellent swimmer. It used its strong feet to push through the water.1

Unlike modern birds, Asiahesperornis had teeth in its beak. These teeth helped it grab slippery fish.1

It lived about 70 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period.1

Its fossils were found in what is now Kazakhstan, which was once covered by a shallow sea called the Turgai Sea.1

Asiahesperornis belonged to a group of birds called Hesperornithes, which were all flightless and toothed.1

The only known species is Asiahesperornis bazhanovi, named after a person named Bazhanov.1

AI-made picture of Asiahesperornis — An AI-made picture of how Asiahesperornis 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: Asiahesperornis
Named by: Nessov and Prizemlin 19912
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Hesperornithidae2
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae2
Age of the rocks: 84 to 66 million years (Campanian / Maastrichtian)2
Rock formations: Zhuravlevskaya2
Countries: Kazakhstan, Russia2
Fossil records: 2 in the Paleobiology Database2
Discovery: Asiahesperornis was named by Russian paleontologists Lev Nessov and B. V. Prizemlin in 1991. They found the fossils in a quarry in Kazakhstan.2 1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Asiahesperornis is related to other hesperornithid birds like Hesperornis.1

Where the facts come from

Asiahesperornis (en.wikipedia.org)
Asiahesperornis 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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