Dino card No. 1256 of 2,027

Neobohaiornis

Say it: nee-oh-boh-HAY-or-niss

Name means: “new bohaiornithid, referring to its more advanced features compared to other bohaiornithids”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Neobohaiornis was a tiny bird that lived about 119 million years ago in what is now China. It was only as big as a modern icterid bird, weighing about 55 grams. This little bird was a type of enantiornithine, an early group of birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs.1

Lived

121 to 113 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

near Lamadong, Jianchang, Liaoning Province, China1

Food

Meat2

Weight

0.047 kg to 0.055 kg1

estimated from humeral length

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Neobohaiornis was about half the size of its relative Bohaiornis, making it the smallest known bohaiornithid.1

Its bones were fully fused, showing it was a grown-up bird, not a baby.1

Neobohaiornis had a reduced alular digit (a small finger-like bone in the wing), which suggests it was a good flyer.1

It had more sacral vertebrae than other bohaiornithids, which may have helped with flight.1

Fossil feathers show that Neobohaiornis had rounded wing feathers and short leg feathers.1

Neobohaiornis lived in the Jehol Biota, a famous fossil site in China that preserved many early birds and dinosaurs.1

AI-made picture of Neobohaiornis — An AI-made picture of how Neobohaiornis 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: Neobohaiornis
Named by: Shen et al. 20243
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Bohaiornithidae3
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: Neobohaiornis was named by Shen and colleagues in 2024 based on a nearly complete skeleton found near Lamadong, China. The fossil is stored at the Museum of Hebei GEO University.1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure what Neobohaiornis ate or what its exact ecological role was.1

Where the facts come from

A new diminutive species of bohaiornithid enantiornithine (Aves: Ornithothoraces) from the Lower Cretaceous Jehol Group, northern China | Scientific Reports (nature.com)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Neobohaiornis 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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