Bohaiornithidae

Bohaiornithidae is a group of early enantiornithean stem-birds from the early Cretaceous Period of China. All undisputed Bohaiornithidae specimens come from the northeast of present-day China – specifically, the eastern and southern foothills of the Greater Khingan mountains –, and date to the early Aptian age, roughly 125–120 million years ago. As of 2024 they are not certainly known from outside this limited region and timeframe, even though there and then they were a prominent – and probably predatory, unlike the bulk of their relatives – element of the local fauna, namely the Jehol Biota. The taxon Bohaiornithidae was established by Wang and colleagues in 2014. They defined it as the natural group formed by all descendants of the common ancestor of the type species, Bohaiornis guoi, and Shenqiornis mengi.