''Bohaiornis'' is a genus of

enantiornithean The Enantiornithes, also known as enantiornithines or enantiornitheans in literature, are a group of extinct avialans ("birds" in the broad sense), the most abundant and diverse group known from the Mesozoic era. Almost all retained teeth and cl ...

birds. Fossils have been found from the Lower Cretaceous Jiufotang Formation of western

Liaoning Liaoning () is a coastal province in Northeast China that is the smallest, southernmost, and most populous province in the region. With its capital at Shenyang, it is located on the northern shore of the Yellow Sea, and is the northernmost ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. The only known species, ''Bohaiornis guoi'', was named by Dongyu Hu, Li Li, Lianhaim Hou and Xing Xu in

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

on the basis of a fully articulated and well-preserved skeleton of a sub-adult. This specimen, LPM (

Paleontological Museum) B00167, preserved two long, ribbon-like feathers attached to the tail rather than a fan of shorter

pennaceous The pennaceous feather is a type of feather present in most modern birds and in some other species of maniraptoriform dinosaurs. Description A pennaceous feather has a stalk or quill. Its basal part, called a ''calamus'', is embedded in the skin ...

feathers. It was similar to the slightly older ''

Eoenantiornis ''Eoenantiornis'' is a genus of enantiornithean birds which lived during the early Cretaceous period (124.6 Ma ago). It is known from a single fossil specimen found in the Yixian Formation in Liaoning province, China. In 1999, the type species ...

'', but much larger in size. ''Bohaiornis'' is the type species of Bohaiornithidae, a family of large predatory enantiornitheans from the Early Cretaceous.Wang M., Zhou Z.-H., O’Connor, J.K., and Zelenkov, N.V. (2014
A new diverse enantiornithine family (Bohaiornithidae fam. nov.) from the Lower Cretaceous of China with information from two new species
''Vertebrata PalAsiatica'', 52(1): 31-76. In 2014, a second, even larger specimen was described. This second specimen (

IVPP The Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP; ) of China is a research institution and collections repository for fossils, including many dinosaur and pterosaur specimens (many from the Yixian Formation). As its name suggest ...

V17963) showed that the snout was relatively broad compared to other enantiornitheans, and also preserved several rock-like structures within the abdominal cavity. These were inferred to be large, rough-textured gastroliths. The presence of only a few large and rough gastroliths in birds and in other non-avian dinosaurs usually indicates a mainly carnivorous diet, suggesting that ''B. guoi'' may have had a raptorial ecology. However, these structures were later found to be mineral concretions which formed after the animal had already died.

References

Early Cretaceous birds of Asia Euenantiornitheans Fossil taxa described in 2011 Yixian fauna {{paleo-bird-stub