This bizarre fossil is of a bird and dinosaur skull hybrid

You may have heard that modern birds are among the closest descendants dinosaurs We can live with it today. Although science has known this for some time, there are few glimpses of the process of complete metamorphosis in animals, which hide subtle changes from us. A new fossil found in China, which is 120 million years old, gives us some of these recent evolutionary details.

What impresses us Preserved bird remains is that it is complete, allowing it to display its unique features, such as a dinosaur’s head on a body much like that of modern birds. In the developmental periods of modern bird juveniles, some physical aspects similar to those of C. can still be seen dinosaurs — but evolution took that away from them when it was developed.

Bird’s body, Dino’s head

Get to work, then, Kratonavis choy, the strange new fossil. Excavations in northern China revealed this and others Primitive birdsLike the Confucioso ornis sanctus, as well as feathered dinosaurs, which are hidden in sedimentary rocks from the Cretaceous period, which are about 120 million years old. With digital reconstruction of the skeleton C. zhuiit was discovered that its skull is almost the same as that of large dinosaurs, such as t-rexnot like a bird.

This means it couldn’t open the top of the beak independently of the skull and mandible, as current birds do—something that even helped them diversify ecologically. The animal would, evolutionarily, be between A Archeopteryxwhich is more like a reptile, and Ornithothoracesalready much closer to modern birds.

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The fossil also contains a long scapula (a bone equivalent to our shoulder blades), as well as a large metatarsal (a medial foot bone), very rare in other ancestors and completely absent in modern birds. The hypothesis is that the metatarsal has shrunk due to natural selection, becoming so small that it will lose its functions when less than 1/4 of the second metatarsal is left.

Long scapula seen in Other birds of the Cretaceous periodand, presumably, would have been useful in the absence of the sternum, the pectoral bone that supports the powerful muscles that move the wings, and are essential to flight today. The longer bone in the wings would help adapt elements such as the retraction and rotation of the humerus, another wing bone, and initial compensations that occurred before the entire journey of animal evolution as we know it.

The fossilized species had the body of a bird and the skull of a dinosaur – CNET: #Artificial intelligence #IoT #IoE Copy @employee @employee https://t.co/TyYe8kzvlM pic.twitter.com/3zP2ixAuAC

– Arceo Choya (@ArceoChoya) January 5, 2023

Somehow, we can summon C. zhui From the “missing link” of birds, or at least one step lower in the evolutionary ladder between them and them dinosaur ancestors. It’s an intriguing reminder of how small biological changes, occurring in different animals and in different ways, can be stacked on top of each other until they find the best possible adaptations to the environment.

Source: nature and its evolution

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