Baptornis

Baptornis
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous,
Illustration of a tarsometatarsus, 1880
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Dinosauria
Clade: Saurischia
Clade: Theropoda
Clade: Avialae
Clade: Hesperornithes
Family: Baptornithidae
AOU, 1910
Genus: Baptornis
Marsh, 1877
Species:
B. advenus
Binomial name
Baptornis advenus
Marsh, 1877[1]
Synonyms

Parascaniornis Lambrecht, 1933

Baptornis ("diving bird") is a genus of flightless, aquatic birds from the Late Cretaceous, some 87-80 million years ago (roughly mid-Coniacian to mid-Campanian faunal stages). The fossils of Baptornis advenus, the type species, were discovered in Kansas, which at its time was mostly covered by the Western Interior Seaway, a shallow shelf sea. It is now known to have also occurred in today's Sweden, where the Turgai Strait joined the ancient North Sea; possibly, it occurred in the entire Holarctic.

Othniel Charles Marsh discovered the first fossils of this bird in the 1870s. This was, alongside the Archaeopteryx, one of the first Mesozoic birds to become known to science.

  1. ^ Brands, S. (2012)

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