''Cratonavis'' (meaning "Craton bird") is an extinct genus of pygostylian avialian from the

Early Cretaceous The Early Cretaceous ( geochronological name) or the Lower Cretaceous (chronostratigraphic name), is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous. It is usually considered to stretch from 145 Ma to 100.5 Ma. Geology Pro ...

Jiufotang Formation of

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. The genus contains a single species, ''C. zhui'', known from a complete skeleton.

Discovery and naming

The holotype 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 ...

V31106, was discovered in sediments of the Jiufotang Formation, dated to the

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 of the early Cretaceous period, near the Xiaotaizi village, (

Jianchang Jianchang () is a county of Huludao City in the southwest of Liaoning province, China. It is the largest division of Huludao, with an area of , and population of 600,000, located in mountainous terrain west of that city, serviced by China Natio ...

County) of

, northeastern China. This specimen consists of a complete, articulated individual with preserved feathers. In 2023, Li Zhiheng, Wang Min, Thomas A. Stidham, and Zhou Zhonghe described ''Cratonavis zhui'', a new genus and species of jinguofortisid, based on these fossil remains. The generic name, "''Cratonavis''", combines a reference to the

North China Craton The North China Craton is a continental crustal block with one of Earth's most complete and complex records of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic processes. It is located in northeast China, Inner Mongolia, the Yellow Sea, and North Korea. The ...

with the Latin word "avis", meaning "bird". The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

, "''zhui''", honors the Chinese geologist Zhu Rixiang, who has studied the destruction of the North China Craton.

Classification

Li ''et al''. (2023) recovered ''Cratonavis'' as a non-ornithothoracine pygostylian member of the Jinguofortisidae, as the sister taxon to ''

Chongmingia ''Chongmingia'' is a genus of basal Avialae, avialan belonging to Pygostylia that lived during the Aptian. It was found in the Jiufotang Formation in Chaoyang, Liaoning, Chaoyang, China, and was described by Wang ''et al''., 2016. The name comes ...

''. Their results are shown in the cladogram below:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q115977757 Early Cretaceous birds of Asia Prehistoric avialans Prehistoric bird genera Aptian genera Fossil taxa described in 2023 Jiufotang fauna Birds described in 2023