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Longirostravis

Say it: LON-jee-roh-STRAY-vis
Name means: “long snout bird”1
Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Longirostravis was a tiny bird that lived about 125 million years ago. It had a long, thin beak and used it to poke into mud for food, just like some shorebirds do today.1

Lived
126 to 120 million years ago3
Early Cretaceous
Fossils found in
Liaoning Province, northeastern China12
Food
Meat1
Top speed
about 27 km/h (17 mph)
Flying, estimate

When did it live?

Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How fast was it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Longirostravis had a beak about 35 millimetres long, which is longer than its skull.1

2

Its teeth were tiny, only about 0.5 millimetres, and were only at the very tip of its beak.1

3

It was about the size of a quail.1

4

Longirostravis is the first early bird found with a probing feeding style, like modern oystercatchers and redshanks.1

5

Its fossil includes lots of feathers, showing it was covered in plumage.1

6

The breastbone had a strange three-branched expansion, like moose antlers.1

AI-madeAI-made picture of Longirostravis
An AI-made picture of how Longirostravis 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
Longirostravis
Named by
Hou et al. 20043
Group
Early birds
Family / clade
Longipterygidae3
Classification
Theropoda > Avialae3
Age of the rocks
126 to 120 million years (Barremian / Aptian)3
Rock formations
Yixian3
Countries
China3
Fossil records
1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery
Longirostravis was named by Hou and colleagues in 2004. The fossil was found by a man named Han, and the species name 'hani' honours him.1
Still debated
Scientists are still debating exactly which group of enantiornithine birds Longirostravis belongs to, with some placing it in Longipterygidae and others in Longirostravisidae.2

Where the facts come from

  1. New Chinese Jehol bird Longirostravis hani (reptilis.net)
  2. PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
  3. Longirostravis 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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Also from the same time: Early Cretaceous

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