Reconstruction of Aurornis xuiMASATO HATTORIResearchers have found a fossil that they claim is the earliest known bird species, a discovery that has scientists rethinking the ever-changing evolutionary tree of early birds and non-avian feathered dinosaurs. The specimen, a chicken-sized creature named Aurornis Xui that lived roughly 150-million-years ago, was described in a study published this week (May 29) in Nature.
“If Aurornis is the most primitive bird, then it is a huge discovery,” paleontologist Stephen Brusatte the University of Edinburgh in the U.K., told the Not Exactly Rocket Science blog, written by Ed Yong, a regular contributor to The Scientist. But the analysis of the specimen and its place in the evolutionary tree is up for discussion, and Brusatte is “not convinced that this paper resolves the early history of birds.”
Dozens of species of feathered dinosaurs have been unearthed over the past decade or so, many of them from Liaoning province in northeastern China, but which of these represented the first birds has been a controversial question. It was thought that Archaeopteryx, a creature with feathered wings that looked capable of flight from roughly ...
