Protoavis texensis (The "first bird from Texas") is regarded as an extinct species that could be the earliest fossil of a bird, pushing back avian origins into the Late Triassic.

Protoavis is claimed to have been a 35 cm tall bird that lived in what is now Texas, USA, between 225 and 210 million years ago. Though it existed 75 million years earlier than Archaeopteryx its skeletal structure is allegedly more bird-like. Protoavis has been reconstructed as a carnivorous bird that had teeth on the tip of its jaws and eyes located at the front of the skull, suggesting that it may have hunted at twilight or in the dark. It had little flying ability but could probably have flown up a tree or down from it. But even I can do that,... straight down that is.

Many biologists doubt Protoavis because it would shatter their current paradigm about the evolution of species.