Ostromia

Ostrom's (animal), named for John Ostrom

• Ostrom · Personal name · John H. Ostrom, American paleontologist
• -ia · Latin · Latinised suffix used to form a genus name

Ostromia honours the American paleontologist John H. Ostrom, who studied Archaeopteryx and other feathered dinosaurs and helped establish the link between dinosaurs and birds. Ostrom also re-examined the specimen in 1970 and showed it was not a pterosaur, as it had been thought. The name is his surname with a Latinised "-ia" ending. The type species is Ostromia crassipes.

Named by

Foth and Rauhut

Year named

2017

Period

Late Jurassic

Stage

Tithonian

Found in

Solnhofen Limestone, Bavaria, Germany

Known from the "Haarlem specimen", first described in 1860 as the pterosaur "Archaeopteryx crassipes" and later assigned to Archaeopteryx. Foth and Rauhut (2017) gave it its own genus. They interpreted it as a close relative of the troodontids (anchiornithine) rather than a true bird. This placement is debated.