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Camptodontus

Say it: kamp-toh-DON-tor-nis

Name means: “bent tooth bird”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Camptodontornis was a small, toothed bird that lived during the Early Cretaceous. It had strong jaws and curved teeth, which helped it catch and eat prey. This bird was an enantiornithine, a group of early birds that went extinct with the dinosaurs.2

Lived

121 to 113 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Food

Meat3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Camptodontornis was originally named Camptodontus, but that name was already used for a beetle, so scientists had to give it a new name in 2019.1

This bird had a Y-shaped furcula, which is the wishbone that helps birds fly.2

Its teeth were strongly curved backward, which helped it hold onto slippery prey.2

Camptodontornis belongs to the family Longipterygidae, a group of early birds with long snouts.2

The only known fossil of Camptodontornis is a nearly complete skeleton found in the Jiufotang Formation of China.3

It lived about 121 to 113 million years ago, during the Aptian age of the Early Cretaceous.3

AI-made picture of Camptodontus — An AI-made picture of how Camptodontus 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: Camptodontus
Named by: Li et al. 20103
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Longipterygidae3
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae3
Age of the rocks: 121 to 113 million years (Aptian)3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Camptodontornis was first described in 2010 by Li Li and colleagues based on a skeleton from Liaoning, China. It was originally called Camptodontus, but that name was already taken by a beetle, so in 2019 it was renamed Camptodontornis.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Camptodontornis is related to other enantiornithine birds.2

Where the facts come from

Camptodontornis gen. nov., a replacement name for the bird genus Camptodontus Li, Gong, Zhang, Yang, and Hou, 2010, a junior homonym of Camptodontus Dejean, 1826 | Zootaxa (biotaxa.org)
A NEW ENANTIORNITHINE BIRD(AVES) FROM THE EARLY CRETACEOUS OF LIAONING,CHINA--《Acta Palaeontologica Sinica》2010年04期 (web.archive.org)
Camptodontus in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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