About 148 to 150 million years in the past, an odd pheasant-sized and bird-like dinosaur with elongated legs and arms constructed very similar to wings inhabited southeastern China, with a puzzling anatomy suggesting it both was a quick runner or lived a way of life like a contemporary wading hen.
Scientists mentioned on Wednesday they’ve unearthed in Fujian Province the fossil of a Jurassic Interval dinosaur they named Fujianvenator prodigiosus – a creature that sheds gentle on a important evolutionary stage within the origin of birds.
The query of whether or not the Fujianvenator, with its curious combination of skeletal options, needs to be labeled as a hen will depend on how one defines a hen, based on research chief Min Wang, a palaeontologist on the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese language Academy of Sciences.
Requested for a phrase to explain Fujianvenator, Wang replied, “I’d say ‘weird’. Fujianvenator is much from just like any fashionable birds.”
A exceptional occasion in dinosaur evolution got here when small feathered two-legged dinosaurs from a lineage referred to as theropods gave rise to birds late within the Jurassic, with the oldest-known hen – Archaeopteryx – courting to roughly 150 million years in the past in Germany.
Fujianvenator is a member of a grouping known as avialans that features all birds and their closest non-avian dinosaur relations, Wang mentioned. Regardless of their modest beginnings, birds survived the asteroid strike 66 million years in the past that doomed their non-avian dinosaur comrades.
Runner or flyer?
The Fujianvenator fossil, found final October, is pretty full however lacks the animal’s cranium and components of its toes, making it exhausting to interpret its eating regimen and way of life.
Fujianvenator’s decrease leg bone – the tibia – was twice so long as its thigh bone – the femur. Such dimensions are distinctive amongst theropods, a gaggle that features all of the meat-eating dinosaurs akin to Tyrannosaurus and varied others. It additionally had an extended, bony tail.
“The forelimb is usually constructed like a hen’s wing, however with three claws on the fingers, that are absent from fashionable birds. So you may name it wing. It can’t be decided whether or not it might fly or not. Based mostly on the skeletal options, Fujianvenator in all probability is at the very least not good at flying,” Wang mentioned.
“The fossil itself doesn’t protect feathers. Nevertheless, its closest relations and almost all of the recognized avialan theropods have feathers, and feathers are extensively distributed amongst dinosaurs. Subsequently, it might not be a shock if Fujianvenator had feathers,” Wang added.
Based mostly on the anatomy of its lengthy legs, the researchers proposed two doable existence – both quick working or wading in a swampy surroundings, very similar to fashionable cranes or herons.
“I’d put my cash on runner,” Wang mentioned.
Scientists are in search of a greater understanding of the origin of birds, in addition to non-avian dinosaurs with bird-like traits.
“To me, Fujianvenator represents one other fascinating piece of proof displaying the vast distribution of assorted bird-like dinosaurs dwelling almost on the similar time and sharing comparable habitats with their hen descendants,” mentioned palaeontologist Zhonghe Zhou of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, a co-author of the research revealed within the journal, Nature.
The earliest chapters within the historical past of birds stay murky as a result of paucity of fossils. After Archaeopteryx – a crow-sized hen with enamel, an extended bony tail and no beak whose fossils had been first discovered within the nineteenth century – there’s a canyon of about 20 million years earlier than the subsequent birds seem within the fossil file.
“One factor is for positive. There’s nonetheless a giant hole between the oldest recognized hen and the second-oldest recognized birds,” Zhou mentioned.
