Scaniornis

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Scaniornis is a prehistoric bird genus. The only known species, Scaniornis lundgreni, lived about 65–59 million years ago in the Early Paleocene. It is known from parts of a right wing—the coracoid, scapula, and humerus—found in Limhamn, Sweden, with other bones found at Selk, Germany. These fossils suggest it lived in the ancient North Sea region, where the climate was warm-temperate to subtropical and fairly humid.

The animal appeared somewhat like a flamingo, and for a long time scientists placed it with flamingos. This supported the idea that flamingos evolved in the late Cretaceous, but later views changed. Flamingos are now thought to be related to grebes, so Scaniornis’s exact placement is uncertain.

In the past, Scaniornis was grouped with a catch-all “transitional shorebird” group called Graculavidae, but that grouping is no longer used. A relative once named Parascaniornis is now considered a hesperornithine (a different group of ancient seabirds) of Baptornis. The Hesperornithes died out by the end of the Cretaceous, while Scaniornis seems to be a true modern bird (neornithine), though not closely related to the Hesperornithes.

Sometimes Scaniornis was placed in the family Scaniornithidae with Gallornis, but Gallornis’s relationships are unclear and not thought to be close to Scaniornis. Later, Gallornis was linked with other supposed Cretaceous “proto-flamingos” like Parascaniornis and Torotix, but none of these are clearly related to modern flamingos today.