All modern birds once developed from two -legged predatory dinosaurs. From when exactly they were more bird than reptile is considered controversial. A “Missing Link” between the two is the well -known primal bird Archeopteryx. He also had bird wings and a long reptile -like tail. In China, however, paleontologists have now found an original bird that lived at the same time as Archeopteryx, but already had a short bird -like cock. He could change the evolution of the birds.
From parrot to penguin, all birds who live today go back to two -legged dinosaurs similar to the well -known velociraptor. A fossil that captures the transition between reptile and bird quite clearly is the Archaeopteryx, which lived in the area of today’s Bavaria around 150 million years ago. This primeval bird already had springs and wings, but still a mouth that was occupied by teeth and a long reptile -like tail. So far, archaeopteryx was considered the prototypical link between birds and reptiles.
A surprisingly modern original bird
In the province of Fujian in the southeast of China, paleontologists around Runsengen from the Fujian Institute of Geological Survey have now found another primal bird from 148 to 150 million years ago, which can be clearly identified as such. Baminornnis Zhenghensis was just 140 to 300 grams during his lifetime and would have easily fit into a human hand. His most unusual feature was a short cock like modern birds.
Baminornnis thus clearly stands out from the more primitive and reptile -like archaeopteryx, as the researchers explain. At the same time, he shifts the first known advise of the short bird’s tail by almost 20 million years, which in turn indicates that primeval birds were surprisingly diverse and widely developed in the Jura, as the paleontologists explain.
A better plane than Archeopteryx
In addition to the short cock, Baminornnis has other characteristics that were surprisingly bird -like for that time. For example, five Baminornis’ tail vertebrae were merged into a short stub, which is called Pygostyl, as Chen and his colleagues report. In modern birds, this pygostyl anchors the flight springs, reduces the air resistance and relocates the focus when flying forward. In addition, the shoulder blade and shoulder roof were already separated from the Chinese original bird and the shoulder roof had the shape of a strut. This is also a bird -typical adaptation for the flight.
“These anatomical characteristics indicate that Baminornnis was probably able to fly better than archaeopteryx and that it might even flew better than some other primitive birds that were created several million years later in the chalk,” explains Stephen Brusatte from the University of Edinburgh, the was not involved in the study in an accompanying article. For him, Baminornis is one of the most important bird fossils that have been excavated since the discovery of the Archeopteryx in the early 1860s.
Source: Runsheng Chen (Fujian Institute of Geological Survey) et al.; Nature, DOI: 10.1038/S41586-024-08410-Z