Avimaia is a genus of fossil birds of the Enantiornithes clade[2] that lived about 115 million years ago in Northwest China.

Egg binding is a serious and lethal condition that is fairly common in small birds undergoing stress.

[2][5] According to paleontologist Jasmina Wiemann of Yale University, “This is a spectacular fossil with a lot of potential for future paleobiological investigations.

[1] In 2019, the type species Avimaia schweitzerae was named and described by Alida M. Bailleul, Jingmai Kathleen O’Connor, Zhang Shukang, Li Zhiheng, Wang Qiang, Matthew C. Lamanna, Zhu Xufeng and Zhou Zhonghe.

The generic name is a combination of the Latin avis, "bird", and Maia, a mother goddess, in reference to the find of an egg in the abdomen of the fossil.

The specific name honours Mary Higby Schweitzer, one of the founders of the application of molecular biology in paleontology.

The pubic bone has a slender build and is curved upwards, causing a hollow profile over the entire length of its rear edge.

The first metatarsal is J-shaped with its diverging lower end having two thirds of the length of the shaft, which is a relatively low ratio.

Each shell consists of three layers, as with modern birds and generally in derived dinosaur eggs.

Such a medullary bone is used by modern bird females to extract chalk from during the laying of eggs.

It has been suggested that in the Enantiornithes such long display feathers were limited to the males only, as an instance of sexual dimorphism.

A cladistic analysis indicated a derived position in that clade, in a polytomy with Neuquenornis, Enantiophoenix, Concornis and Eoenantiornis.