Iteravis
Iteravis is an extinct genus of ornithuromorph bird known from the Early Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of what is today the Liaoning Province of China. The genus contains a single species, Iteravis huchzermeyeri, named in honor of the archosaur palaeontologist Dr. Fritz Huchzermeyer, who died shortly before Iteravis was described. The relationships between Iteravis and species of Gansus have been debated, with some researchers arguing for a synonymy between the former and G. zheni, and others recovering a closer relationship between the two genera within the family Gansuidae.

X. Wang, J. Huang, Y. Hu, X. Liu, J. Peteya & J. A. Clarke · 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
- GansuidaePBDB
- 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.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 121.4 Mya and 113.2 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Iteravis 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
- Jiufotang Formation · Jehol Group1
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The named rock units Iteravis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Iteravis and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Iteravis and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
11 taxa- Changzuiornis ahgmi1 site
- Dingavis longimaxilla1 site
- Gansus zheni1 site
- Guidraco venator1 site
- Ikrandraco avatar1 site
- Jeholochelys lingyuanensis1 site
- Lingyuanosaurus sihedangensis1 site
- Monoenantiornis sihedangia1 site
- Pterosauria1 site
- Yangavis confucii1 site
- Zhongjianosaurus yangi1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Iteravis, 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 Iteravis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- X. Wang, J. Huang, Y. Hu, X. Liu, J. Peteya & J. A. Clarke
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Iteravis 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Iteravis”
- 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 itGansuidae through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Zhou et al. 2014