Hongshanornis
Hongshanornis was a small, beaked bird that lived near lakes and marshes in Early Cretaceous China. It had long legs for wading in shallow water and a slender beak for catching fish or bugs. This bird is one of the earliest known beaked ornithurine birds, a group that includes modern birds.1
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Fun facts
Hongshanornis had a beak in both its upper and lower jaws, making it the earliest known beaked ornithurine bird.1
This bird had a predentary bone in its lower jaw, a feature once thought unique to ornithischian dinosaurs.1
Hongshanornis lived about 125 to 120 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period.2
Its long legs and short, less curved claws show it was a wading bird, not a tree-dweller.1
One fossil of Hongshanornis preserved gizzard stones (gastroliths), which helped it grind up food.3
Hongshanornis was originally thought to be toothless, but later studies found it had small teeth in both jaws.3
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Myth buster
Myth: Hongshanornis was completely toothless like modern birds.
Truth: Scientists now know it had small teeth in both upper and lower jaws, though it also had a beak.3
For dino experts
- Scientific name
- Hongshanornis
- Named by
- Zhou and Zhang 20055
- Group
- Early birds
- Family / clade
- Hongshanornithidae5
- Classification
- Theropoda > Avialae5
- Age of the rocks
- 126 to 120 million years (Barremian / Aptian)5
- Rock formations
- Yixian5
- Countries
- China5
- Fossil records
- 2 in the Paleobiology Database5
- Discovery
- Hongshanornis was named by Zhou and Zhang in 2005. The first fossil, a nearly complete skeleton with feathers, was found in the Yixian Formation at Shifo, Ningcheng, Inner Mongolia, China.12
- Still debated
- Scientists still debate whether Hongshanornis was more closely related to modern birds than toothed ornithurines, or if teeth were lost several times in early bird evolution.1
Where the facts come from
- Discovery of an ornithurine bird and its implication for Early Cretaceous avian radiation | PNAS (pnas.org)
- PBDB Taxon (paleobiodb.org)
- Hongshanornis (en.wikipedia.org)
- PeerJ A new specimen of the Early Cretaceous bird Hongshanornis longicresta: insights into the aerodynamics and diet of a basal ornithuromorph (peerj.com)
- Hongshanornis in The Paleobiology Database (CC BY 4.0): age, places, rock formations, classification.
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