| Ambiortus Temporal range: Early Cretaceous, 130 Ma |
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|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| clade: | Carinatae |
| Family: | †Ambiortidae |
| Genus: | †Ambiortus Kurochkin, 1982 |
| Species: | †A. dementjevi |
| Binomial name | |
| Ambiortus dementjevi Kurochkin, 1982 |
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Ambiortus is a prehistoric bird genus. The only known species, Ambiortus dementjevi, lived about 130 million years ago during the Early Cretaceous in today's Mongolia.
It belongs to the Ornithurae, which include the living birds, their ancestors, and some extinct Mesozoic groups like the toothed Hesperornithes and Ichthyornis. Among these, it appears to be fairly ancestral, similar to the better-known and slightly younger Gansus yumenensis. These taxa suggest that the ancestors of the birds of our time had separated from the Enantiornithes (the dominant subclass of Mesozoic birds), not too long after the times of Archaeopteryx.[1]
The family Ambiortidae is sometimes used for this bird, especially if it is considered a close relative of the much younger Apsaravis which is then included therein.[1]
The results of a cladistic analysis published in 2011, on the other hand, indicate that at least Apsaravis and Palintropus (which was mistaken as a much more modern bird initially) are very closely related. They might thus represent more advanced forms of the Ambiortus lineage, and in this case the Ambiortidae, or at least the more inclusive Ambiortiformes, might apply to all of them.