Eurolimnornis is the name given to a monotypic

Monotypic

In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group with only one biological type. The term's usage differs slightly between botany and zoology. The term monotypic has a separate use in conservation biology, monotypic habitat, regarding species habitat conversion eliminating biodiversity and...

 genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of fossil bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 from the Early Cretaceous

Early Cretaceous

The Early Cretaceous or the Lower Cretaceous , is the earlier or lower of the two major divisions of the Cretaceous...

. E. corneti probably was a primitive, but essentially modern bird and may indeed be an early neognathe

Neognathae

Neognaths are birds within the subclass Neornithes of the class Aves. The Neognathae include virtually all living birds; their sister taxon Palaeognathae contains the tinamous and the flightless ratites....

 ancestral to the grebe

Grebe

A grebe is a member of the Podicipediformes order, a widely distributed order of freshwater diving birds, some of which visit the sea when migrating and in winter...

s, although the alternative theories that it was a theropod or pterosaur

Pterosaur

Pterosaurs were flying reptiles of the clade or order Pterosauria. They existed from the late Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period . Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight...

 (Benton et al., 1997) or a more primitive (ornithuromorph) bird cannot be completely refuted.

The holotype and only material known to date (MTCO-P 7896) is a distal fragment of the right humerus

Humerus

The humerus is a long bone in the arm or forelimb that runs from the shoulder to the elbow....

, which was at first ascribed to the same species as the specimen of Palaeocursornis corneti

Palaeocursornis

Palaeocursornis is a monotypic genus of prehistoric bird. The species P. corneti, described in 1984, was initially assumed to be a flightless paleognathe, possibly a ratite, but it may actually be more primitive and not even a neornithine but an ornithuromorph bird or indeed not a bird at all...

. Regarding the synonymy (or lack thereof) of this taxon, see Bock & Bühler (1996).

The remains were found in Berriasian

Berriasian

In the geological timescale, the Berriasian is an age or stage of the Early or Lower Creteceous. It is the oldest or lowest subdivision in the entire Cretaceous. It spanned between 145.5 ± 4.0 Ma and 140.2 ± 3.0 Ma...

 (around 143 mya) deposits at Cornet

Brusturi, Bihor

Brusturi is a commune in Bihor County, northwestern Romania with a population of 4,238 people. It is composed of eight villages: Brusturi, Cuieşd, Loranta, Orvişele, Păuleşti, Picleu, Ţigăneştii de Criş and Varasău....

 near Oradea

Oradea

Oradea is the capital city of Bihor County, in the Crișana region of north-western Romania. The city has a population of 204,477, according to the 2009 estimates. The wider Oradea metropolitan area has a total population of 245,832.-Geography:...

, Romania

Romania

Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

. Eurolimnornis occurred on what was then an archipelago

Archipelago

An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...

 of volcanic and coral island

Coral island

A coral island is the result of an atoll whose lagoon has dried up or been filled in with coral sand and detritus. This state is typically the last in the life cycle of an island, the first being volcanic and the second being an atoll. Most of the world's coral islands are in the Pacific Ocean...

s towards the east of the Piemont-Liguria Ocean

Piemont-Liguria Ocean

The Piemont-Liguria basin or the Piemont-Liguria Ocean was a former piece of oceanic crust that is seen as part of the Tethys Ocean...

. Its habitat

Habitat

* Habitat , a place where a species lives and grows*Human habitat, a place where humans live, work or play** Space habitat, a space station intended as a permanent settlement...

 was hilly, karst

KARST

Kilometer-square Area Radio Synthesis Telescope is a Chinese telescope project to which FAST is a forerunner. KARST is a set of large spherical reflectors on karst landforms, which are bowlshaped limestone sinkholes named after the Kras region in Slovenia and Northern Italy. It will consist of...

ic terrain with numerous freshwater and/or brackish rivers, lakes and swamps. As this archipelago lay around 35°N latitude

Latitude

In geography, the latitude of a location on the Earth is the angular distance of that location south or north of the Equator. The latitude is an angle, and is usually measured in degrees . The equator has a latitude of 0°, the North pole has a latitude of 90° north , and the South pole has a...

 in a warmer, wetter climate than exists today, it was roughly similar to today's Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 or Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

.(Benton et al., 1997)