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Sinornis santensis
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Sinornis santensis

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Sinornis is a genus of enantiornithean birds from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of the People's Republic of China.

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taxon name
Sinornis santensis
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Sinornis
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Encyclopedic overview

8 sections
Contents
  • Description
  • Skeleton
  • Flight and perching
  • Discovery
  • Classification
  • Paleobiology
  • References
  • External links

Sinornis is a genus of enantiornithean birds from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of the People's Republic of China.

When it was described in 1992, this 120 million-year-old sparrow-sized skeleton represented a new avian sharing "primitive" features with Archaeopteryx as well as showing traits of modern birds. Its basal features include, but are not limited to, a flexible manus with unguals, a footed pubis, and stomach ribs. Sinornis is known only from the type species, Sinornis santensis. The generic name comes from the Latin Sino~, 'China' and the Greek ornis, 'bird'. The specific name santensis refers to the provenance from Chaoyang county in Liaoning Province as Santa, meaning "Three Temples", is a traditional name of the county.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Sinornis santensis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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