Dapingfangornis
Dapingfangornis was an enantiornithean bird. It lived during the Early Cretaceous and is known from fossils—including a complete skeleton—found in the Jiufotang Formation in Liaoning province, People's Republic of China. Small to medium-sized, it had a sternum with both long and short lateral processes, and a unique thornlike process on its nares.

Dlyj0604 · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- EoenantiornithidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Coelurosauria
- Life habit
- ground dwelling, solitaryPBDB, for Theropoda
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Theropoda
Time the record covers
At most 8.2 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 121.4 Mya and 113.2 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
2 occurrences of Dapingfangornis on record, most of them in the Early Cretaceous. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
2 occurrences- Early Cretaceous100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
1 formation
- Jiufotang Formation · Jehol Group2
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The named rock units Dapingfangornis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Dapingfangornis and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Dapingfangornis and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
25 taxa- Confuciusornis2 sites
- Alethoalaornis agitornis1 site
- Chaoyangopterus zhangi1 site
- Enantiornithes1 site
- Hongshanopterus lacustris1 site
- Huoshanornis huji1 site
- Jeholornis1 site
- Jeholornis prima1 site
- Liaoxipterus brachyognathus1 site
- Longchengpterus zhaoi1 site
- Longipteryx chaoyangensis1 site
- Microraptor1 site
- Microraptor gui1 site
- Neimengornis rectusmim1 site
- Parahongshanornis chaoyangensis1 site
- Pengornis houi1 site
- Philydrosaurus proseilus1 site
- Piscivorenantiornis inusitatus1 site
- Plantae1 site
- Sapeornis chaoyangensis1 site
- Testudines1 site
- Xiangornis shenmi1 site
- Yabeinosaurus robustus1 site
- Yanornis martini1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Dapingfangornis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- New material of Chaoyangopterus (Pterosauria: Pterodactyloidea) from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of western Liaoning, China1
- New Eoenantiornithid Bird from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of Western Liaoning, China1
Each of the 2 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Dapingfangornis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Dlyj0604
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dapingfangornis was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itEoenantiornithidae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Li et al. 2006