Dino card No. 1058 of 2,027

Limnornis

Say it: lim-NOR-nis

Name means: “marsh bird”1

Ate: FishFlying reptilesEarly CretaceousNot technically a dinosaur

Limnornis was a flying reptile that lived about 143 million years ago. It was a pterosaur, not a dinosaur, and it probably ate fish. Its fossils were found in Romania.3 1

Fun fact: pterosaurs flew over the dinosaurs, but they were their cousins, not dinosaurs themselves.

Lived

143 to 137 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Food

Fish3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Limnornis was first thought to be a bird, but scientists later realized it was a pterosaur, a flying reptile.1

The name Limnornis was already used for a bird called the curve-billed reedhaunter, so the pterosaur got a new name: Palaeocursornis.1

Only one bone of Limnornis has been found, a piece of a leg or arm. That makes it hard for scientists to know exactly what it looked like.1

Limnornis lived on a warm, wet archipelago of volcanic and coral islands, similar to the Caribbean or Indonesia today.1

The habitat of Limnornis had hills, caves, rivers, lakes and swamps.1

AI-made picture of Limnornis — An AI-made picture of how Limnornis 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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Myth buster

Myth: Limnornis was a dinosaur.

Truth: Limnornis was a pterosaur, a flying reptile that is not a dinosaur.1

For dino experts

Scientific name: Limnornis
Named by: Kessler and Jurcsák 19843
Group: Flying reptiles
Family / clade: Pterosauria3
Classification: Pterosauria3
Age of the rocks: 143 to 137 million years (Berriasian)3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Limnornis was named by Kessler and Jurcsák in 1984 based on a single bone found in a mine at Cornet near Oradea, Romania.3 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure if Limnornis is a valid genus because the only fossil is very incomplete. Some think it might be a tapejaroid pterosaur, but others consider it a nomen dubium (doubtful name).1

Where the facts come from

Palaeocursornis (en.wikipedia.org)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Limnornis 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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