''Camptodontornis'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

genus of

enantiornithine 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 cla ...

bird which existed in what is now Chaoyang in

Liaoning Province Liaoning () is a coastal provinces of China, 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 i ...

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 ...

during the early Cretaceous period (

Aptian The Aptian is an age in the geologic timescale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is a subdivision of the Early or Lower Cretaceous Epoch or Series and encompasses the time from 121.4 ± 1.0 Ma to 113.0 ± 1.0 Ma (million years ago), a ...

age). It is known from a well-preserved

skeleton A skeleton is the structural frame that supports the body of an animal. There are several types of skeletons, including the exoskeleton, which is the stable outer shell of an organism, the endoskeleton, which forms the support structure inside ...

including a skull found in the Jiufotang Formation of

. Its original generic name was "Camptodontus" (meaning "bent tooth"); it was named by Li Li, En-pu Gong, Li-dong Zhang, Ya-jun Yang and Lian-hai Hou in

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

. However, the name had previously been used for a genus of beetle (Dejean, 1826).Dejean, (1826). Spec. gén. Coléopt., 2, 476. The type species is "Camptodontus" ''yangi''. Demirjian (2019) coined a replacement generic name ''Camptodontornis''. The status of ''C. yangi'' as a distinct species is disputed, with Wang ''et al.'' (2015) considering it to be a probable

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

of '' Longipteryx chaoyangensis''.

References

Longipterygids Prehistoric bird genera Aptian life Early Cretaceous birds of Asia Cretaceous China Fossils of China Paleontology in Liaoning Fossil taxa described in 2010 Fossil taxa described in 2019 {{paleo-bird-stub