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NATURE COMMUNICATIONS
[1] Fossils: The oldest known relative of living birds *IMAGES*
Two well-preserved fossils collected from deposits in China push back the evolutionary
record of modern birds by five to six million years, reports a study in Nature
Communications. The specimens, named Archaeornithura meemannae, are the oldest
known records of Ornithuromorpha, the same evolutionary branch that gave rise to all
bird species currently living.
Fossilised bird specimens from the Mesozoic era (252-66 million-years-ago) are rare,
with little being known about the early evolutionary history of the ancestors of modern
birds. Ornithuromorpha are thought to have represented around half the total diversity of
bird species during the Mesozoic era. Other clades representing bird species during this
time include the Enantiornithes, characterised by teeth and clawed wings. However, this
group of birds are not thought to have left any living descendants, going extinct at the
Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary approximately 66 million-years-ago.
Min Wang and colleagues describe this new species, unearthed from the Sichakou basin
in Hebei, northeastern China, as having a near-completely preserved plumage with
anatomical features characteristic of an aerodynamic lifestyle and manoeuvrability during
flight. The absence of feathers on the upper leg, or tibiotarsus, is also indicative of a
wading lifestyle, consistent with other fossil bird species found in similar deposits.
Stratigraphic and radiometric dating of the geological layers from which these fossils
were extracted indicates these new specimens lived during the Early Cretaceous period
130.7 million years ago, predating the last known specimens of this branch from the
Lower Cretaceous, 125 million years ago.
ARTICLE DETAILS
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7987
Corresponding Author:
Min Wang
Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China
Email: wangmin@sioc.ac.cn
Please link to the article in online versions of your report (the URL will go live after the embargo ends):
http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/ncomms7987
Image captions:
Image 1
A reconstruction of the oldest ornithuromorph, Archaeornithura meemannae, a specialized wading bird from the
Early Cretaceous of China. Credit: Zongda Zhang)
Image 2
Holotype of Archaeornithura meemannae. (a) Main slab; (b) counter slab. Credit: Wang et al., Nature
Communications
Image 3
Details of the anatomy of Archaeornithura meemannae: photographs (a) and line drawings (b) of of A.
meemannae's wing; line drawings of hands of other bird ancestors (c); hands of A. meemannae (d); (e)(f)
photographs of the feet of A. meemannae. Credit: Wang et al., Nature Communications
Image 4
Plumage of Archaeornithura meemannae: (a) left wing; (b) right wing; (c) covert feathers over the skull and neck;
(d) alular feathers on the left alular digit. Credit: Wang et al., Nature Communications