Earliest short-tailed bird from the Late Jurassic of China (1 Viewer)

[JTweedie]

Sorry that article isn't open access, but it has just been published and it outlines research on the oldest known short-tailed bird from the Jurassic period.

Earliest short-tailed bird from the Late Jurassic of China - Nature

Two recently discovered bird fossils from the Late Jurassic Zhenghe Fauna demonstrate that highly derived bird-like features and the origin of birds appeared much earlier in the Jurassic period than previously estimated.

www.nature.com

Here's the (jargon-laden as you might expect) abstract from the link above:

Recent macroevolutionary studies predict a diversification of early birds during the Jurassic period, but the unquestionable Jurassic bird fossil record is limited to Archaeopteryx, which has also been referred to deinonychosaurian dinosaurs by some analyses. Although they have feathered wings, the known Jurassic birds are more similar to non-avialan theropods in having the ancestral long reptilian tail. This is in stark contrast to most Cretaceous and crownward taxa, which have a short tail that terminates in a compound bone called the pygostyle. Here we report on the oldest short-tailed avialan, Baminornis zhenghensis gen. et sp. nov., from the recently discovered Late Jurassic Zhenghe Fauna, which fills a noticeable spatio-temporal gap in the earliest branching avialan fossil record. B. zhenghensis exhibits a unique combination of derived ornithothoracine-like pectoral and pelvic girdles and plesiomorphic non-avialan maniraptoran hand, demonstrating mosaic evolution along stem avialan line. An avialan furcula collected from the same locality is referrable to ornithuromorphs on the basis of our morphometric and phylogenetic analyses. These newly discovered fossils demonstrate the early appearance of highly derived bird features, and together with an anchiornithine fossil from the same locality, they suggest an earlier origin of birds and a radiation of early birds in the Jurassic.