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Navaornis

Say it: nah-VAY-orn-is
Name means: “Nava's bird, honoring William Nava who discovered the fossil site”1
Ate: MeatEarly birdsLate Cretaceous

Navaornis was a starling-sized bird that lived about 80 million years ago in what is now Brazil. It had a toothless, large-eyed skull that looked almost like a modern bird, but it belonged to an ancient group called enantiornithines. Its beautifully preserved skull let scientists see inside its brain for the first time in such an old bird.12

Lived
84 to 66 million years ago3
Late Cretaceous
Fossils found in
William's Quarry at Sítio Paleontológico 'José Martin Suárez', Presidente Prudente, São Paulo State, Brazil13
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

Navaornis had a toothless skull with large eyes, just like many birds today, but its brain still had some ancient features like a small cerebellum and a weakly expanded telencephalon.1

2

Its skull is the best-preserved Mesozoic bird skull ever found, preserved in three dimensions without being flattened.1

3

Navaornis lived around 85 to 75 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous period.12

4

The fossil site where Navaornis was found is very small, only about 6 square meters, but it has yielded hundreds of enantiornithine bird bones.1

5

Navaornis belongs to a group called Enantiornithes, which were the most diverse birds of the Mesozoic and lived on every continent except Antarctica.12

6

Its inner ear (bony labyrinth) was shaped like that of many modern birds but was much larger.1

AI-madeAI-made picture of Navaornis
An AI-made picture of how Navaornis 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
Navaornis
Named by
Chiappe et al. 20243
Group
Early birds
Family / clade
Enantiornithes3
Classification
Theropoda > Avialae3
Age of the rocks
84 to 66 million years (Campanian / Maastrichtian)3
Rock formations
Adamantina3
Countries
Brazil3
Fossil records
1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery
The fossil site was discovered in 2004 by William Nava, and the holotype skull was found in 2016. The species was named Navaornis hestiae by Chiappe and colleagues in 2024.13
Still debated
Scientists are still debating exactly how Navaornis is related to other enantiornithines, because its toothless skull and modern-looking head make it hard to place in the family tree.1

Where the facts come from

  1. Cretaceous bird from Brazil informs the evolution of the avian skull and brain | Nature (nature.com)
  2. Cretaceous bird from Brazil informs the evolution of the avian skull and brain (pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)
  3. Navaornis in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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