‘Bizarre’ bird-dinosaur hybrid solves 30 million-year-long thriller

A ‘bizarre’ fossil present in China has helped to fill a 30 million yr hole within the evolution of birds.

Chinese scientists say the beforehand unknown species was a ‘high-speed runner’ who lived in a ‘swamp-like’ atmosphere.

Present day birds had descended from theropod dinosaurs – two-legged dinosaurs with hole bones – by the Late Jurassic interval.

However, the precise course of by which this occurred has remained a thriller as a result of an absence of fossils from the Jurassic to the oldest recognized report of Cretaceous birds round 150 million years in the past.

Now a Chinese staff has described a 150-million-year-old avialan theropod present in Zhenghe County in Fujian Province, southeastern China.

They mentioned the brand new species, named Fujianvenator prodigiosus, displays an odd combination of options shared with different predecessors of right now’s birds.

‘Our comparative analyses show that marked changes in body [shape] occurred along the early avialan line, which is largely driven by the forelimb, eventually giving rise to the typical bird limb proportion [wings],’ mentioned lead creator Dr Wang Min, of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

‘However, Fujianvenator is an odd species that diverged from this main trajectory and evolved bizarre hindlimb architecture.’

He mentioned the surprisingly lengthy decrease leg and different options recommend that Fujianvenator lived in a swamp-like atmosphere and was a fast runner or a long-legged wader, representing a beforehand unknown model of early birds.

The researchers say that throughout the Late Jurassic–Early Cretaceous interval, south jap China underwent intensive tectonic actions, ensuing within the uncommon panorama the place Fujianvenator was discovered.

The staff say their findings, published in the journal Science, opens a ‘new window’ into the Late Jurassic terrestrial ecosystem of the planet, and so they plan to proceed their exploration of Zhenghe and close by areas.

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