A reconstruction of the bird-like dinosaur Fujianvenator prodigiosus.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
About 148 to 150 million years in the past, a wierd 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 life-style like a contemporary wading chicken.
Scientists stated on September 6 they unearthed in Fujian Province the fossil of a Jurassic Period 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 categorised as a chicken is determined by how one defines a chicken, in accordance with research chief Min Wang, a palaeontologist on the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
A exceptional occasion in dinosaur evolution got here when small feathered two-legged dinosaurs from a lineage generally known as theropods gave rise to birds late within the Jurassic, with the oldest-known chicken – Archaeopteryx – courting to roughly 150 million years in the past in Germany.
Fujianvenator is a member of a grouping referred to as avialans that features all birds and their closest non-avian dinosaur kinfolk, Mr. Wang stated. Despite their modest beginnings, birds survived the asteroid strike 66 million years in the past that doomed their non-avian dinosaur comrades.
The Fujianvenator fossil, found final October, is pretty full however lacks the animal’s cranium and elements of its ft, making it laborious to interpret its eating regimen and life-style.
Fujianvenator’s decrease leg bone – the tibia – was twice so long as its thigh bone – the femur. Such dimensions are distinctive amongst theropods; it additionally had a protracted bony tail.
“The forelimb is generally built like a bird’s wing, but with three claws on the fingers, which are absent from modern birds. So you can call it wing. It cannot be determined whether it could fly or not,” Mr. Wang stated.
“The fossil itself does not preserve feathers. However, its closest relatives and nearly all the known avialan theropods have feathers … Therefore, it would not be a surprise if Fujianvenator had feathers,” Mr. Wang added.
Scientists are searching for a greater understanding of the origin of birds in addition to non-avian dinosaurs with bird-like traits.
The earliest chapters within the historical past of birds stay murky attributable to a fossils scarcity. After Archaeopteryx – a crow-sized chicken with enamel, a protracted bony tail, and no beak – there’s a canyon of about 20 million years earlier than the following birds seem within the fossil document.
