NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, WANG ET AL.Two 130.7-million-year-old partial skeletons of Archaeornithura meemannae, a newly discovered species of ancient six-inch-tall wading bird found in siltstone slabs in northeastern China, represent the oldest known ancestor of modern birds, predating the previous record-holder by almost 6 million years, according to a study published this week (May 5) in Nature Communications.
After birds began to evolve separately from dinosaurs at the end of the Jurassic period (around 150 million years ago), two groups of species developed. The Enantiorinthes, which had teeth and clawed wings and did not fly well, went extinct 66 million years ago, while the Ornithuromorpha evolved into modern birds. Previously, the oldest known ornithuromorph fossil was dated to 125 million years ago.
In the new study, scientists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Tianyu Natural History Museum of Shandong, China, and Macquarie University in Australia identified the fossils in the stone slabs from the Sichakou basin of the Hebei province as belonging to an older species with features present in modern birds. The birds were most likely good fliers, with such features ...
