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Gracilornis

Say it: gras-ill-OR-niss
Name means: “slender bird”1
Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Gracilornis was a tiny, early bird that lived in China during the Age of Dinosaurs. It had a very slender skeleton and could fly, but it was not a dinosaur itself. It belonged to a group of ancient birds called enantiornithines.12

Lived
121 to 113 million years ago4
Early Cretaceous
Fossils found in
Liaoning Province, China1
Food
Meat2
Length
0.1 to 0.3 m2
estimated from PBDB adult length range of 10 to <100 cm

When did it live?

Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

Gracilornis about 0.3 m longA house cat about 0.5 mA dog about 1 mA bicycle about 1.8 m

How big was Gracilornis compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Gracilornis had a very small sternum, or breastbone, compared to its body length. The sternum was only about 11% of the trunk length.3

2

This bird lived around 110 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period.1

3

The name Gracilornis comes from Latin and Greek words meaning 'slender bird', because its skeleton was very thin and light.1

4

Gracilornis is known from a nearly complete skull and skeleton, which helps scientists understand what it looked like.1

5

It belonged to a group called Enantiornithes, which were the most common birds during the Cretaceous period.1

AI-madeAI-made picture of Gracilornis
An AI-made picture of how Gracilornis 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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Scientific name
Gracilornis
Named by
Li and Hou 20114
Group
Early birds
Family / clade
Cathayornithidae4
Classification
Theropoda > Avialae4
Age of the rocks
121 to 113 million years (Aptian)4
Rock formations
Jiufotang4
Countries
China4
Fossil records
1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery
Gracilornis was named by Li Li and Hou Shilin in 2011. They found the fossil in the Jiufotang Formation in Chaoyang, Liaoning, China.1
Still debated
Scientists are not sure exactly how Gracilornis flew, because its small sternum might mean it had weak flight muscles.3

Where the facts come from

  1. Gracilornis (en.wikipedia.org)
  2. PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
  3. Gracilornis, enantiornithine bird from China (reptilis.net)
  4. Gracilornis 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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More from the same group: Early birds

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Also from the same time: Early Cretaceous

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