By Scott Reid on @drawingwithdinosaurs
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Name: Eoconfuciusornis zhengi
Name Meaning: Dawn Confucius Bird
Described By: Zhang, Zhou & Benton
Classification: Dinosauria, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Confuciusornithiformes
Eoconfuciusornis is an Avialan that lived about 131 million years ago, in the Haquterivian age of the Early Cretaceous - making it older than Confuciusornis, its relative, leading to its name. It had a pointed, toothless snout, but this snout was probably not homologous (meaning, having the same evolutionary origin) as modern bird beaks, given that many birds more derived than Eoconfuciusornis retained teeth. It is, however, the oldest known Avialan to have a beak. It is from the Dabeigou Formation in Hebei Province, China, and it is known multiple fairly complete skeletons, including a female in the early process of generating new eggs. Eoconfuciusornis was smaller than Confuciusornis, and it had longer legs and lacked a crest on the humerus, unlike Confuciusornis.
By Michael Rothman, taken from Zheng et al. 2017.
It is the most early derived member of the Confuciusornis family group (which is called Confuciusornithidae or Confuicusornithiformes, depending on the context, so I’m just going to keep calling it the family group.) It had a triangular head, and pointed but broad wings, indicated it was well built for gliding, as well as ribbon tail feathers that would probably have been used for display, seeing as they were sexually dimorphic. Some coloration is known from the fossil female, which does not preserve the ribbon feathers (indicating the aforementioned sexual dimorphism); it’s difficult to completely construct the coloring, but the females were probably mostly black, with a brown throat patch, grey head and legs, and darkly spotted wings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eoconfuciusornis
Martyniuk, M. P. 2012. A Field Guide to Mesozoic Birds and other Winged Dinosaurs. Pan Aves; Vernon, New Jersey.
Zheng, X., J. K. O’Connor, X. Wang, Y. Pan, Y. Wang, M. Wang, Z. Zhou. 2017. Exceptional preservation of soft tissue in a new specimen of Eoconfuciusornis and its biological implications.
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