| Osteodontornis Temporal range: Miocene (but see text)
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| Artist's impression | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | †Odontopterygiformes |
| Family: | †Pelagornithidae |
| Genus: | †Osteodontornis Howard, 1957 |
| Species: | †O. orri
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| Binomial name | |
| †Osteodontornis orri Howard, 1957
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Osteodontornis is an extinct seabird genus. It contains a single named species, Osteodontornis orri (Orr's bony-toothed bird, in literal translation of its scientific name), which was described quite exactly one century after the first species of the Pelagornithidae (Pelagornis miocaenus) was. O. orri was named after Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History paleontologist Phil C. Orr, for his recognition of the importance of the specimen.[1]
The bony-toothed or pseudotooth birds were initially believed to be related to albatrosses in the Procellariiformes, but actually they seem to be rather close relatives of either pelicans and storks, or of waterfowl, and are here placed in the order Odontopterygiformes to account for this uncertainty. Also, their internal taxonomy is not well-resolved. An earlier-described pseudotooth bird, Cyphornis magnus from Vancouver Island (Canada), was believed to be of Eocene age but is nowadays assumed to have lived about twenty million years ago in the Early Miocene, not too long before the Clarendonian (Middle/Late Miocene) O. orri. It may be that Osteodontornis is a junior synonym of Cyphornis.[2]