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Yatenavis

Say it: YAH-ten-AY-vis

Name means: “stone bird”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsLate Cretaceous

Yatenavis was a tiny bird that lived near the end of the age of dinosaurs. It was about the size of a sparrow and flew through the forests of what is now Patagonia in Argentina. This little bird is one of the southernmost enantiornithine birds ever found.2 1

Lived

72 to 66 million years ago3

Late Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Estancia La Anita, Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina2 1

Food

Meat3

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

cool stuff

Fun facts

Yatenavis is known from just a single bone: the lower half of a right wing bone (humerus).2 1

It lived about 72 to 66 million years ago, during the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous.3

Yatenavis is the southernmost enantiornithine bird ever discovered anywhere in the world.2 1

It was one of the smallest enantiornithine birds from the Late Cretaceous of South America, about the size of a sparrow.2 1

Its name comes from the Aoni Kenk word for 'stone' and Latin for 'bird', meaning 'stone bird'.1

Yatenavis lived alongside other birds, including a larger enantiornithine and a bird called Kookne yeutensis.1

The fossil was found in the Chorrillo Formation, which was formed by a river system in a cold, high-latitude environment.2 1

AI-made picture of Yatenavis — An AI-made picture of how Yatenavis 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: Yatenavis
Named by: Álvarez Herrera et al. 20233
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Enantiornithes3
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae3
Age of the rocks: 72 to 66 million years (Maastrichtian)3
Rock formations: Chorrillo3
Countries: Argentina3
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database3
Discovery: Yatenavis was named and described in 2023 by a team of Argentine and Japanese scientists, including Gerardo Álvarez Herrera and Federico Agnolín. The single fossil bone was found during a joint expedition in March 2022 at Estancia La Anita in Patagonia, Argentina.2 1
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly what Yatenavis looked like or how it behaved, because only a single wing bone has been found.2 1

Where the facts come from

New enantiornithine bird from the the uppermost Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of southern Patagonia, Argentina (ri.conicet.gov.ar)
New enantiornithine bird from the uppermost Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) of southern Patagonia, Argentina (sciencedirect.com)
Yatenavis 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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