''Sazavis'' was an
enantiornithine bird
Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...
from the
Late Cretaceous
The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...
.
It might have been related to ''
Nanantius'' and lived in what is now the
Kyzyl Kum of
Uzbekistan
Uzbekistan (, ; uz, Ozbekiston, italic=yes / , ; russian: Узбекистан), officially the Republic of Uzbekistan ( uz, Ozbekiston Respublikasi, italic=yes / ; russian: Республика Узбекистан), is a doubly landlocked co ...
.
[
There is a single ]species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
known to date, ''Sazavis prisca''.
Etymology
Generic name composed of the Kazakh ''саз (saz)'' ("clay") and the Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
''avis'' ("bird"), referring to the clay depression of Uzbekistan, near which this bird was discovered. The specific name derived from the Latin ''priscus'' and means "ancient".
Description
It is only known from a single piece of tibiotarsus
The tibiotarsus is the large bone between the femur and the tarsometatarsus in the leg of a bird. It is the fusion of the proximal part of the tarsus with the tibia.
A similar structure also occurred in the Mesozoic Heterodontosauridae. These s ...
[ about wide in a distal joint.][
The bone has been found in the ]Bissekty Formation
The Bissekty Formation (sometimes referred to as Bissekt) is a geologic formation and Lagerstätte which crops out in the Kyzyl Kum desert of Uzbekistan, and dates to the Late Cretaceous Period. Laid down in the mid to late Turonian, it is dated ...
. The bird was a size of a pigeon
Columbidae () is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with short necks and short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. They primarily ...
,[ approximately some long in life.]
Paleoecology
''Sazavis'' possibly lived on nearby coasts or in the liman forests dominated by the flowering plants of the Platanaceae
Platanaceae, the "plane-tree family", is a family of flowering plants in the order Proteales. The family consists of only a single extant genus ''Platanus'', with eight known species. The plants are tall trees, native to temperate and subtropic ...
family.[
]
References
External links
*
Bissekty Formation
Enantiornitheans
Fossils of Uzbekistan
Fossil taxa described in 1989
Late Cretaceous birds of Asia
Prehistoric bird genera
Turonian life
{{paleo-bird-stub