Word.ws English Dictionary

hesperornithid

hesperornithid noun: any extinct avialan in the family Hesperornithidae.

hesperornithid: any extinct avialan in the family Hesperornithidae
Image: Loozrboy from Toronto, Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

hesperornithid (plural hesperornithids)

  1. Any extinct avialan in the family Hesperornithidae.
    • Finally, the Volgorod locality, Maastrichtian in age, has yielded two dinosaurs (an indeterminate hesperornithid and a basal theropod) and a few turtles.2011, David B. Weishampel, Coralia-Maria Jianu, Transylvanian Dinosaurs, Johns Hopkins University Press, page 109
    • The arrival of these hesperornithids in more southern waters during the early Campanian may indicate a cooler climate, closer shores, adaptations to changes in prey, or other factors.2017, Michael J. Everhart, Oceans of Kansas, Indiana University Press, page 365

Forms of hesperornithid

pluralhesperornithids

Origin of hesperornithid

From translingual Hesperornithidae, from Hesperornis (“genus name”).

Questions about hesperornithid

What does hesperornithid mean?
Hesperornithid means any extinct avialan in the family Hesperornithidae.
What part of speech is hesperornithid?
Hesperornithid is a noun.
What is the plural of hesperornithid?
The plural of hesperornithid is hesperornithids.

Words near hesperornithid in the dictionary

  1. hesperomyine
  2. hesperomyines
  3. Hesperonesian
  4. hesperornithean
  5. hesperornitheans
  6. hesperornithid
  7. hesperornithids
  8. hesperornithiform
  9. hesperornithiforms
  10. hesperornithine
  11. hesperornithines

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hesperornithid (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “hesperornithid.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/hesperornithid. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.