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Yuanjiawaornis

Say it: yoo-an-jee-ah-WOR-nis

Name means: “bird from Yuanjiawa”1

Ate: MeatEarly birdsEarly Cretaceous

Yuanjiawaornis was a big, powerful bird that lived about 120 million years ago in what is now China. It was one of the largest birds of its time, with a wingspan nearly half a metre wide. It probably hunted small animals for food.1 2

Lived

121 to 113 million years ago4

Early Cretaceous

Fossils found in

Liaoning Province, China1 2

Food

Meat3

Wingspan

0.5 m1

estimated

When did it live?

Triassic

Jurassic

Cretaceous

252 million years ago20114566, the asteroid

How big was it?

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cool stuff

Fun facts

Yuanjiawaornis is known from a nearly complete skeleton without a skull, found in 2005 by a paleontologist near the village of Yuanjiawa.1

Most enantiornithine birds were as small as sparrows or starlings, but Yuanjiawaornis was much larger, about the size of Zhouornis.1 2

The fossil of Yuanjiawaornis has no preserved feathers, which is unusual for bird fossils from Liaoning.1

Yuanjiawaornis lived during the Early Cretaceous period, about 120 million years ago, in the Jiufotang Formation.1 3

The holotype specimen was probably a young adult, because its wrist bones were not fully fused.2

Yuanjiawaornis had a uniquely shaped synsacrum (a fused part of the backbone) that may be special to enantiornithine birds.2

AI-made picture of Yuanjiawaornis — An AI-made picture of how Yuanjiawaornis 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: Yuanjiawaornis
Named by: Hu et al. 20154
Group: Early birds
Family / clade: Enantiornithes4
Classification: Theropoda > Avialae4
Age of the rocks: 121 to 113 million years (Aptian)4
Rock formations: Jiufotang4
Countries: China4
Fossil records: 1 in the Paleobiology Database4
Discovery: Yuanjiawaornis was named in 2015 by Hu Dongyu and colleagues based on a skeleton found in 2005 near Yuanjiawa village in Liaoning, China.1 2
Still debated: Scientists are not sure exactly how Yuanjiawaornis is related to other enantiornithine birds, because its skull is missing.1

Where the facts come from

Yuanjiawaornis (en.wikipedia.org)
Yuanjiawaornis viriosus , gen. et sp. nov., a large enantiornithine bird from the Lower Cretaceous of western Liaoning, China (sciencedirect.com)
PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
Yuanjiawaornis in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.

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