Study: Ancient flying birds began to forage on ground, lost ability over time
The bird family tree just gained a new and distinctive member, according to Chinese paleontologists.
They have found a long-legged, toothy, stubby-armed, three-fingered dinosaur that was an important early member of the lineage that includes birds and their closest dino relatives.
The 160-million-year-old dinosaur, Haplocheirus sollers, is about 10 million years older than what is believed to be the world's first known bird,Archaeopteryx, and exhibits characteristics associated with both dinos and birds.
As a result, the new species helps to fill in the fossil record and cement the long-held view that birds did indeed emerge out of the Maniraptora "hand snatcher" clade.
"Many dinosaurs are very birdlike and early birds are dinosaurlike," co-author Xing Xu told Discovery News, adding that there is still debate over the exact moment when birds first emerged.
"It is more or less depending on what you call a bird a bird, which is somewhat an arbitrary procedure," said Xu, a professor in the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology & Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "For example, Epidexipteryx (a small, feathered "dinosaur") could be considered to be the earliest representative of the avian lineage."
For the study, published in the latest issue of Science, Xu and his colleagues analyzed the new dinosaur, discovered in orange mudstone beds at Junggar Basin in Xinjiang, China. According to Xu, the researchers determined it was "a relatively small carnivorous dinosaur" about 6.5 feet long with a slender head and "numerous small teeth."
The "hand snatcher" description seems quite appropriate in this case, since the dinosaur's hands had three strong fingers, with the middle finger being "much more robust than the others."
H. sollers belonged to the Alvarezsauroidea group of dinosaurs, now thought to have originated in Asia. Later members possessed a single, massive claw on each hand that was probably used for digging. The impressive middle finger on the new dinosaur likely represented an early evolutionary stage for this claw.
The new dinosaur, which was big for a bird but small for a dino, also shows how some dinosaurs shrunk down to bird size over time.
H. sollers is the world's largest and oldest known alvarezsauroid — 63 million years older than other known members of this group.
A second important dinosaur study this week, published in Nature and again co-authored by Xu, shows how another bird trademark — feathers — originated. Scientists previously wondered if they were first used for flight, insulation or display.
How I Feel
In the first place, I feel this question is weird. I never knew that Ostrich were ancient animals and could even possibly fly. This article though really informed me of the open world. Lastly, in this article they use dinosaur a lot so, if someone were looking blindly at this paper they would think it was about dinosaurs. that is how I feel about this article.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35129642/ns/technology_and_science-science/
No comments:
Post a Comment