On February 2, paleontologists from China, Canada, the United States and other countries announced in Beijing that they had found a most complete ancient bird in Burmese amber so far, and it was the most developed ancient bird found in amber.
This research was jointly completed by Associate Professor Xing Lida of China Geo University, Associate Professor Li Gang of Institute of High Energy Physics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, American researcher Jingmai O 'Connor of Institute of vertebrate paleontology and Paleoanthropology of Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Luis M. Chiappe, Dean of Dinosaur Research Institute of Los Angeles Museum of Natural History. Professor, together with Professor Ryan C. McKellar from the Royal Museum of Saskatchewan and Professor Zeng Guowei from Taipei City University, published an online cover article in Science Bulletin, a top academic journal in China.
Xing Lida, an associate professor at China Geo University (Beijing), one of the authors of the paper, told me that this ancient amber bird is about 5 cm long, only the size of a hummingbird, and it came from the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs were rampant 1 100 million years ago.
The newly discovered amber ancient bird fossils provide more anatomical information, such as skull base, spine (about 5 cervical vertebrae and 8 vertebrae), left forelimb (including humerus, radius and ulna), pelvic region and femur.
This newly discovered amber ancient bird belongs to anti-bird. Anti-bird is a relatively primitive bird that appeared in Cretaceous period. Their flying ability is very strong, and their big toes are locked with the other three toes, which is suitable for arboreal, but they eventually died out with dinosaurs at the end of Cretaceous. The joint combination of the shoulder strap skeleton of the anti-bird is just the opposite of that of the live bird, so it is named "anti-bird".
From June 2065438 to June 2007, a team led by China paleontologist Xing Lida released their chicks in amber, which attracted the attention of domestic and foreign media. Regarding this new discovery in amber, Xing Lida said that it is by far the most complete bird amber specimen in the world: "Although bird fossils are older and more complete than this, they are so complete in amber. This is the first time. "
Professor Zeng Guowei of Taipei City University said that when miners polished amber, they didn't recognize it as an ancient bird. Miners stripped the specimen along the coronal plane, so it became very thin and was nicknamed "pancake bird" by the research team.
The discovery of "pancake bird" specimen shows that the anti-bird colony in amber in Myanmar still had great ecological differentiation and radiation in the middle Cretaceous, which is of great significance for human beings to understand the evolution of ancient birds.
Anti-birds flourished in the Cretaceous period, and probably acquired the ability to fly at the earliest, and radiated to the whole world before modern birds (today's birds). Today, scientists have found different anti-bird fossils in Cretaceous strata around the world. Huaxia bird, Polo Hong Niao, Chinese bird, anti-bird, long-winged bird, original feather bird and long-billed bird found in China are all anti-birds.
The anti-bird population was completely extinct at the end of Cretaceous. Before these two pieces of amber were discovered, scientists could only understand them through fossil skeletons. It was the appearance of these two pieces of amber that made scientists see the organizational structure of this ancient bird for the first time, and even observed the details of their feathers. In amber's packaging, these details are almost the same as before.