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Orienantius

Say it: or-ee-en-AN-tee-us

Name means: “east opposite bird”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Orienantius was a tiny bird that lived about 130 million years ago in what is now China. It had feathers and could fly, but it was not like modern birds, it belonged to an ancient group called enantiornithines, which had a different way of flying.2 1

Lived

133 to 126 million years ago3

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Hebei Province, China1 2

Food

Meat3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Orienantius is known from two nearly complete skeletons that still have feathers and even soft tissues like wing skin preserved.1 2

It was about the size of a modern Eurasian Skylark, a small songbird.1

Orienantius could fly with high maneuverability and used a flap-gliding style, like some birds today.2

The holotype (main specimen) was not fully grown when it died, some of its bones had not yet fused together.1

Its name comes from Latin and Greek words meaning 'east' and 'opposite', referring to its discovery in East Asia and its group Enantiornithes.1

Orienantius lived during the Early Cretaceous, making it one of the oldest known enantiornithine birds.2

AI-made picture of Orienantius — An AI-made picture of how Orienantius 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: Orienantius
Named by: Liu et al. 20193
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Enantiornithes3
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae3
Age of the rocks: 133 to 126 million years (Hauterivian)3
Rock formations: Huajiying3
Countries: China3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Orienantius was named in 2019 by Di Liu and colleagues based on two fossils from the Huajiying Formation in Hebei, China. The species name ritteri honors German scientist Johann Wilhelm Ritter.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are still debating exactly how Orienantius and other early enantiornithines evolved their flight abilities, since they show features of both primitive and advanced birds.2

Where the facts come from

Orienantius (en.wikipedia.org)
Soft tissue preservation in two new enantiornithine specimens (Aves) from the Lower Cretaceous Huajiying Formation of Hebei Province, China (sciencedirect.com)
Orienantius in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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