110 million year old bird fossil found in China
Dinosaur-Era Birds Surprisingly Ducklike, Fossils Suggest
Fossil experts in China have unearthed a 110-million-year-old bird that is strikingly similar to today’s birds, considering that it lived alongside dinosaurs.The ducklike diver, known to science as Gansus yumenensis, shows advanced features not common in the fossil record until much more recently.The discovery supports the view that key characteristics of modern birds evolved quickly and early, long before the demise of the dinosaurs. It is also indirect evidence that the common ancestor of all today’s birds was, like Gansus, adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. Chinese and American paleontologists located the exquisitely preserved remains in mudstone slabs formed by sediments deposited on an ancient lake bottom.Because the bones were buried gently and slowly in mud, many of them remain uncrushed. Soft tissues were also preserved, including flight feathers and webbing—like a duck’s—between the bird’s toes. Gansus had been known previously from a single fossil foot, discovered at the same location in 1981. Fieldwork in 2003 and 2004 yielded some 50 new bird specimens, most of which appear to be Gansus.
Five of the recently discovered skeletons, virtually complete from the neck down, are described in detail in a paper to be published in tomorrow’s edition of the journal Science.
Complete skeletons, of anything, are quite rare in the fossil record. Researchers have found quite a few in China in the past 10-20 years. I’m looking forward to seeing pictures of these.
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