English: Guess on how the cretaceous bird Liaoningornis could have looked.

The first two versions of this file were based on a bird fossil picture from the islamic fossil book Atlas of Creation II by Harun Yahya^[1] that I originally found on Google Images. I subsequently realized that Liaoningornis are still only known from the holotype fossil IVPP 11303.^[2]

• Head: the two previous versions of my Liaoningornis restorations were restored with a horny, toothless beak, based on the fossil misattributed to Liaoningornis in Atlas of Creation II. ^[1] The Liaoningornis holotype does not preserve a skull, but as a member of the enantiornithes clade, it is likely that it had jaws with small teeth (which might have been covered by lips, as depicted here). The "ginger" read colour is a guess, after recommendations I got at the WikiProject Dinosaurs/Image review-page.^[3]
• Tail feathers: the two previous versions of my Liaoningornis restoration had a fan of tail feathers like modern birds. The present version were first restored with a few enlarged contour feathers, as a 2012 study reclassified Liaoningornis as a member of enantiornithes, a clade of birds in which evidence for tail feathers forming “aerodynamic rectricial fans” like modern birds used to be unknown^[4] (though the discovery of Chiappeavis have started to change this).^[5] After recommendations, I removed the rudimentary tail feathers.^[3]

1. ↑ ^{a b} [1]
2. ↑ Hou L (1997). “A carinate bird from the Upper Jurassic of western Liaoning, China”. Chinese Science Bulletin 42(5): p. 413-417
3. ↑ ^{a b} WikiProject Dinosaurs/Image review: "Liaoningornis" (December, 2021)
4. ↑ Clarke J.A. et.al. (2006). “Insight into the evolution of avian flight from a new clade of Early Cretaceous ornithurines from China and the morphology of Yixianornis grabaui”. Journal of Anatomy 208(3): p. 287-308. DOI: 10.1111/j.1469-7580.2006.00534.x
5. ↑ O’Connor J.K. et.al. (2016). ”An Enantiornithine with a Fan-Shaped Tail, and the Evolution of the Rectricial Complex in Early Birds”. Current Biology 26(1): p. 114-119