Enaliornis

sea bird

• enalios · Greek · of the sea, marine
• ornis · Greek · bird

The name combines the Greek "enalios" (of the sea) and "ornis" (bird), so it means "sea bird". It was chosen because the fossils came from marine deposits and the animal looks to have been a swimming, diving bird. It was probably similar in lifestyle to modern divers or grebes.

Named by

Seeley

Year named

1876

Period

Early Cretaceous

Stage

Albian

Found in

Cambridge Greensand, Cambridgeshire, England, UK

Enaliornis is an early toothed, foot-propelled diving bird (an ornithurine). Birds are avian dinosaurs, so it counts as a dinosaur only in the cladistic sense, not as a non-avian dinosaur. The fossils come from the Cambridge Greensand, which contains reworked material, so the exact age is somewhat uncertain. The type species is E. barretti.