''Omnivoropteryx'' (meaning "omnivorous wing") is a genus of primitive flying avialan from the early Cretaceous Upper Jiufotang Formation of China. The authors who described ''Omnivoropteryx'',

Stephen Czerkas Stephen A. Czerkas (born September 19, 1951, in Alhambra, California) was an American sculptor and paleontologist. He frequently worked as a contributor to both museums and the motion picture industry, and was later the director and co-founder of ...

and

Qiang Ji Qiang Ji from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, United States, was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) profession ...

, stated that their specimen closely resembles '' Sapeornis'', but the pubis was longer and, since no skull was known for ''Sapeornis'', they did not consider the two names synonyms.Czerkas, S. A. & Ji, Q. (2002). "A preliminary report on an omnivorous volant bird from northeast China." ''In'': Czerkas, S. J. (editor): ''Feathered Dinosaurs and the origin of flight. The Dinosaur Museum Journal'' 1: 127-135
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/ref> The later discovery of ''Sapeornis'' skulls shows that they were indeed similar to ''Omnivoropteryx''. This may make ''Omnivoropteryx'' a junior synonym of '' Sapeornis'', and the name may be abandoned.Zhou, Z., and Zhang, F. (2003). "Anatomy of the primitive bird ''Sapeornis chaoyangensis'' from the Early Cretaceous of Liaoning, China". "Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences", 40: 731-747.

Classification

Czerkas and Ji created the family

Omnivoropterygidae Omnivoropterygidae (meaning "omnivorous wings") is a Family (biology), family of primitive avialans known exclusively from the Jiufotang Formation of China, though putative omnivoropterygids are known from the Maevarano Formation of the Maastrich ...

to contain the genus ''Omnivoropteryx'', as well as the

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

Omnivoropterygiformes, though some scientists do not recognize taxa that contain only one genus. Paul Sereno, for example, considered the family Omnivoropterygidae to be invalid because it is redundant and was not given a phylogenetic definition.Sereno, P. C. (2005).
Omnivoropterygidae
." Stem Archosauria—TaxonSearch ersion 1.0, 7 November 2005/ref> The single species ''O. sinousaorum'' shows an interesting mix of specialized and generalized characters: the legs were short and well suited for perching on branches, while the wings were long, suggesting it did not need a running or jumping takeoff to get into the air. Its skull, on the other hand, was similar to some early oviraptorosaurs, having the structure of a beak designed for crushing and tearing with some teeth at the tip of the upper jaw. Thus, the species may have been an opportunistic omnivore (as the name suggests), utilizing a wide range of food sources, unlike other early birds which were active predators of smaller animals.

References

{{Authority control Early Cretaceous birds of Asia Bird genera Prehistoric avialans Jiufotang fauna Fossil taxa described in 2002