Apatornis celer
- Length
- 5 m (16.4 ft)
- Period
- Late Cretaceous (83.5 Mya)
- Place
- North America · United States
- Food
- Herbivore
- Clade
- Dinosauria The clade containing all dinosaurs, terrestrial archosaurs with upright limbs.
Apatornis is a genus of ornithuran dinosaurs endemic to North America during the late Cretaceous. It currently contains a single species, Apatornis celer, which lived around the Santonian-Campanian boundary, dated to about 83.5 million years ago. The remains of this species were found in the Smoky Hill Chalk of the Niobrara Formation in Kansas, United States. It is known from a single fossil specimen: a synsacrum, the fused series of vertebrae over the hips.
While the known fossil remains are very incomplete, enough has been found to reasonably estimate that the body length was between 7 – 8 in.
What we know
- Named by (Marsh, 1873a).
- Fossils found in North America and United States.
What we guess
The reconstruction notes for Apatornis — soft tissue, color, behavior — haven't been written up yet. Only the recorded basics above are filled in so far.