Do you know what ancient birds looked like 100 million years ago? Can you imagine a ferocious prehistoric raptor not yet the size of a human slap? Today (October 30), a team of Chinese and foreign scientists announced that a very special fossil of an ancient bird has been found in Burmese amber, which is of great significance to our understanding of the diversity of ancient birds and the evolution of feathers.
The amber specimen found in Myanmar is only about one or two centimeters in size, but it is in this small ancient bird amber that the outline of the bird's foot is recorded in detail, and there is a lot of hair on the surface of the skin of the foot.
Xing Lida, associate professor of China University of Geosciences (Beijing), introduced that this specimen has a very obvious feather, and the feather shaft in the middle of the feather is very thick, called the feather shaft dominant type of feather, which is considered to be the tail feather on its tail. Previously, they found a lot of this tail feather, but they didn't know if it was left by the anti-bird, because no other evidence was found next to the feather, this time they found a fat bird paw next to the feather, so scientists can now determine that this feather dominated by the feather shaft belongs to the anti-bird.
The specimens found this time are also the first evidence that the feather-dominant feathers can be directly corresponding to the remains of the anti-bird. Through the proportions of the feet and the morphology of the feathers, experts believe that the birds in this specimen are anti-birds that lived during the Cretaceous period.
Xing Lida said that the bird's claws are very fat and very stout, this structure is particularly similar to modern birds of prey, and a closer look will find that its fourth toe is thicker than the second and third toes, extremely short and powerful, which are the characteristics of birds of prey.
Although the body length of this prehistoric raptor is only 5 centimeters, and the claws of the bird are less than 1 centimeter, don't underestimate this small point, it is also very fierce.
Xing Lida introduced that this very small prehistoric bird of prehistoric raptor flew in the forest at that time, and could catch flying insects in the air, beetles or lizards with special small sizes on the ground, which could become its food. The foot of this type of ancient bird is not found in the local fossil record, which shows that the diversity of birds in the age of the dinosaurs is far beyond our imagination.
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(Source: Jiangsu Radio and Television Finance Media News Center/Wang Shu Editor/Jiang Jie)