Longipteryx chaoyangensis
Longipteryx is a genus of prehistoric bird which lived during the Early Cretaceous. It contains a single species, Longipteryx chaoyangensis. Its remains have been recovered from the Jiufotang Formation at Chaoyang in Liaoning Province, China. Apart from the holotype IVPP V 12325 - a fine and nearly complete skeleton — another entire skeleton, some isolated bones and many other specimens are known to date.

Jonathan Chen · CC BY-SA 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
- LongipteryxPBDB
- 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 Longipteryx chaoyangensis 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 Longipteryx chaoyangensis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Longipteryx chaoyangensis and its relatives
Early CretaceousWhere Longipteryx chaoyangensis and its relatives were recorded in the Early Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
12 taxa- Alethoalaornis agitornis1 site
- Chaoyangopterus zhangi1 site
- Confuciusornis1 site
- Dapingfangornis1 site
- Jeholornis1 site
- Liaoxipterus brachyognathus1 site
- Longchengpterus zhaoi1 site
- Microraptor1 site
- Parahongshanornis chaoyangensis1 site
- Philydrosaurus proseilus1 site
- Testudines1 site
- Yuanjiawaornis viriosus1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 2 sites for Longipteryx chaoyangensis, 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
2 references- New material of Longipteryx (Aves: Enantiornithes) from the Lower Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China with the first recognized avian tooth crenulations1
- Two new ornithurine birds from the Early Cretaceous 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 Longipteryx chaoyangensis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jonathan Chen
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Longipteryx chaoyangensis 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, “Longipteryx”
- 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 itLongipteryx through timeFormations of the Early CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Zhang et al. 2000