Dino card No. 0602 of 2,027

Eopengornis

Name means: “dawn pengornis”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Eopengornis was a tiny, feathered dinosaur that could fly! It lived in what is now China, about 130 million years ago, and was an early kind of bird.1 5

Lived

133 to 126 million years ago5

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Luozigou Village, Fengning, China5

Food

Meat5

Weight

0.155 kg3 4

estimate from holotype, which is an early juvenile; adult size unknown

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How heavy was it?

as heavy as 1.5 bananas

lighter than a house cat

How big was Eopengornis compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Eopengornis had special tail feathers with a strong central shaft, called a rachis, which helped it fly and show off.1 2

It belonged to a group of early birds called enantiornithes, which were very common during the time of dinosaurs.1

The only known species is called Eopengornis martini.1

Its fossils were found in rocks that are about 132 to 125 million years old, from a time called the Hauterivian.5

Eopengornis is part of the pengornithid family, a group of early birds that lived in Asia.1

AI-made picture of Eopengornis — An AI-made picture of how Eopengornis 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: Eopengornis
Named by: Wang et al. 20145
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Pengornithidae5
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae5
Age of the rocks: 133 to 126 million years (Hauterivian)5
Rock formations: Huajiying5
Countries: China5
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database5
Discovery: Eopengornis was named and described by scientists Wang, O'Connor, Zheng, Wang, Hu, and Zhou in 2014, based on a fossil found in China.1 5
Still debated: Scientists are still studying exactly how Eopengornis used its strong tail feathers for flight and display.1 2

Where the facts come from

Eopengornis (en.wikipedia.org)
Insights into the evolution of rachis dominated tail feathers from a new basal enantiornithine (Aves: Ornithothoraces) (bionames.org)
Quantitative investigation of pengornithid enantiornithine diet reveals macrocarnivorous ecology evolved in birds by Early Cretaceous (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
Quantitative investigation of pengornithid enantiornithine diet reveals macrocarnivorous ecology evolved in birds by Early Cretaceous: iScience (cell.com)
Eopengornis in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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