#navaornis

[tinylongwing]

Really rough little Navaornis sketch before I go out for my Saturday run.

[thatonegaycactus]

Day 27 of Draw Dinos Daily! The Navaornis!!! Fucked up guy with the fingies to match!

[rajingdragon]

Uploading both of these at once. I did do day 26 on time, was just too tired and lazy to post it.

Anyway - a sub and a twink

[new-dinosaurs]

Navaornis hestiae Chiappe et al., 2024 (new genus and species)

(Type skull of Navaornis hestiae [scale bar = 10 mm], from Chiappe et al., 2024)

Meaning of name: Navaornis = [discoverer of the original fossil and the site where it was found] William Nava's bird [in Greek]; hestiae = for Hestia [Greek goddess of architecture]

Age: Late Cretaceous (Santonian–Campanian)

Where found: Adamantina Formation, São Paulo, Brazil

How much is known: A nearly complete skull. Some associated bones from the rest of the skeleton likely belong to the same individual. A partial braincase from the same locality probably comes from a different individual of the same species.

Notes: Navaornis was an enantiornithean, a group of bird-like, usually flight-capable dinosaurs from the Cretaceous. It is one of a handful of enantiornitheans known to have been toothless, giving its skull a superficial resemblance to those of modern birds. However, Navaornis was unlike modern birds (and more like typical non-bird dinosaurs) in the proportions of the bones making up its upper jaw and the lack of a mobile joint in its palate.

The skull of Navaornis is so well preserved that the overall shape and structure of its brain can be reconstructed, a first for an enantiornithean. Similar to birds today, its brain was arched so that its brainstem pointed somewhat downward instead of backward, and the main part of the brain devoted to cognition was relatively enlarged (though not to the same extent as in modern birds). On the other hand, its cerebellum (part of the brain involved in coordinating movement) was relatively small. An especially unusual feature of Navaornis was its greatly enlarged inner ear, the functional significance of which is unknown.

Reference: L.M. Chiappe, G. Navalón, A.G. Martinelli, I. de Souza Carvalho, R.M. Santucci, Y.-H. Wu, and D.J. Field. 2024. Cretaceous bird from Brazil informs the evolution of the avian skull and brain. Nature 635: 376–381. doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-08114-4