Gretcheniao sinensis
Gretcheniao is an extinct genus of enantiornithean bird known from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of Liaoning, China.

Luis M. Chiappe, Meng Qingjin, Francisco Serrano, Trond Sigurdsen, Wang Min, Alyssa Bell, Liu Di · 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
- GretcheniaoPBDB
- 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 6.2 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 125.77 Mya and 119.57 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Gretcheniao sinensis 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
1 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
- Yixian Formation · Jehol Group1
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The named rock units Gretcheniao sinensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Gretcheniao sinensis and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Gretcheniao sinensis and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
1 taxon- Sapeornis chaoyangensis1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Gretcheniao sinensis, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 Gretcheniao sinensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Luis M. Chiappe, Meng Qingjin, Francisco Serrano, Trond Sigurdsen, Wang Min, Alyssa Bell, Liu Di
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan was found. Smithsonian Open Access, MorphoSource and Sketchfab were all searched.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Gretcheniao”
- 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 itGretcheniao through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Chiappe et al. 2019