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Fumicollis

Say it: foo-mih-KOL-iss

Name means: “smoke hill”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsLate Cretaceous

Fumicollis was a flightless diving bird that lived in the Late Cretaceous seas of North America. It had teeth and used its strong legs to swim underwater and catch fish.1 2

Lived

90 to 84 million years ago4

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Logan County, Kansas, USA1 2

Food

Meat3

Length

0.5 to 1 m3

estimated from small size

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

as long as 2 house cats nose to tailas long as 6 bananas end to end

How big was Fumicollis compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Fumicollis had teeth in its beak, unlike most modern birds.1

It could not fly, but it was a very good swimmer and diver.1 2

Its name comes from the Smoky Hill Chalk where its fossil was found.1

Fumicollis lived about 86 to 82 million years ago in the Western Interior Seaway.3 2

The only known fossil of Fumicollis was discovered in 1937 by Harold Shepherd and George Sternberg.1 2

Fumicollis was a more advanced diver than the similar bird Baptornis, but not as advanced as the larger Hesperornis.1

AI-made picture of Fumicollis — An AI-made picture of how Fumicollis 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: Fumicollis
Named by: Bell and Chiappe 20154
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Hesperornithiformes4
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae4
Age of the rocks: 90 to 84 million years (Coniacian / Santonian)4
Rock formations: Niobrara4
Countries: USA4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Fumicollis was named in 2015 by Alyssa Bell and Luis Chiappe. The only fossil was found in 1937 in Kansas, USA, but was first thought to be a different bird called Baptornis.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how fast and deep Fumicollis could dive compared to other hesperornithiform birds.1

Where the facts come from

Identification of a New Hesperornithiform from the Cretaceous Niobrara Chalk and Implications for Ecologic Diversity among Early Diving Birds | PLOS One (journals.plos.org)
Fumicollis (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Fumicollis 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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