Dino card No. 0978 of 2,027

Kompsornis

Say it: komp-SOR-nis

Name means: “elegant bird”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Kompsornis was a bird-like dinosaur that lived in what is now China. It had a long tail and could probably fly, making it an early relative of modern birds.1

Lived

121 to 113 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Lingyuan, Liaoning, China3

Food

Meat2

Length

0.3 to 0.5 m2

estimated from related jeholornithiforms

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

How long was it?

as long as 3 bananas end to end

How big was Kompsornis compared to YOU?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Kompsornis had a completely fused breastbone and pelvis, which is a very advanced feature for such an early bird-like dinosaur.1

Its name means 'elegant bird' in Greek.1

Kompsornis lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 121 to 113 million years ago.2

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

Scientists think Kompsornis was a ground-dwelling carnivore that could also fly.2

Kompsornis belongs to a group called Jeholornithiformes, which are some of the earliest bird-like dinosaurs.2

AI-made picture of Kompsornis — An AI-made picture of how Kompsornis 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: Kompsornis
Named by: Wang et al. 20203
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Jeholornithiformes3
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: Kompsornis was named by Xuri Wang and colleagues in 2020 based on a nearly complete skeleton from Liaoning, China.1
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Kompsornis is related to other early bird-like dinosaurs and modern birds.1

Where the facts come from

Xuri Wang et al，A new jeholornithiform exhibits the earliest appearance of the fused sternum and pelvis in the evolution of avialan dinosaurs-Institute Of Geology, Chinese Academy Of Geological Sciences (en.igeo.cags.ac.cn)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Kompsornis in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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