Eocathayornis
Eocathayornis was a small, early bird that lived during the Age of Dinosaurs. It could flap its wings powerfully and fly like a modern bird, but it still had teeth and claws on its wings.2
When did it live?
How fast was it?
Fun facts
Eocathayornis had a reduced claw on its third wing finger, but the other two wing claws were still present.2
Its radius bone was about three-fourths as wide as its ulna, which helped make its wing strong for flapping.2
The sternum (breastbone) had a keel and a pair of long, backward-pointing processes, adaptations for flight.2
Eocathayornis was about the same size as Cathayornis, another early bird from the same fossil site.2
It lived around 120 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period.1
The only known fossil is a skull and upper body preserved as impressions in rock, split into two slabs.1
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- Scientific name
- Eocathayornis
- Named by
- Zhou 20023
- Group
- Early birds
- Family / clade
- Enantiornithes3
- Classification
- Theropoda > Avialae3
- Age of the rocks
- 121 to 113 million years (Aptian)3
- Rock formations
- Jiufotang3
- Countries
- China3
- Fossil records
- 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
- Discovery
- The fossil was collected in 1994 by Zhou Zhonghe from the Jiufotang Formation in Liaoning, China. Zhou named it Eocathayornis walkeri in 2002, honoring Cyril Alexander Walker for his work on Enantiornithes.12
- Still debated
- Scientists are not sure exactly how Eocathayornis is related to other early birds, but it is thought to be more primitive than Cathayornis.1
Where the facts come from
- Eocathayornis (en.wikipedia.org)
- A new and primitive enantiornithine bird from the Early Cretaceous of China (ivpp.cas.cn)
- Eocathayornis in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.
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