A newly described fossil is as old as the “first bird,” Archaeopteryx, and represents a birdlike dinosaur that might have specialized in running or wading instead of flying
One hundred and fifty million years ago, a young, bantam-sized, bird-like dinosaur became mired in a swamp in what is now southeastern China, and succumbed. Its fossilized remains, unearthed in 2022 and named Fujianvenator prodigiosus, show it to be one of the earliest bird-like dinosaurs to date from the Jurassic period. The researchers describe their discovery in a paper published today in Nature.
Although dinosaurs were largely extinct by 66 million years ago, therapods, the three-clawed, hollow-boned group that included Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus rex, had started to evolve into today’s birds. Many palaeontologists consider the first bird to be a 150-million-year-old feathered dinosaur called Archaeopteryx, fossils of which were found in Germany.
But it didn’t have many modifications that would contribute to flight. For example, it had a shortened shoulder blade and fingers more specialized for grabbing. Strangest of all are the bird’s hyper-elongated hind legs, in which the lower leg bone — the tibia — is twice as long as the thigh bone. Such long legs indicate a highly skilled runner, perhaps similar to a roadrunner , says Bhart-Anjan Bhullar, a palaeontologist at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
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