Paleontologists have identified a new species of avialan (a member of the group that contains modern birds and bird-like dinosaurs) from a fossilized partial skeleton found in China. This dinosaur exhibits an unusual set of morphological features that are shared with other early avialans as well as troodontid and dromaeosaurid dinosaurs.
“Our understanding of the earliest evolutionary history of the Avialae, the most inclusive clade that contains all modern birds but not Deinonychus or Troodon, has been hampered by the limited diversity of fossils from the Jurassic period, when avialans diverged from the main line of theropods,” said Dr. Min Wang, a paleontologist at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and colleagues.
“Specifically, few avialans have been reported from localities other than the Middle-Late Jurassic Yanliao Biota in northeast China (166-159 million years ago) and the slightly younger Solnhofen Limestones in Germany, leaving a gap of approximately 30 million years until the oldest known record of Cretaceous avialans.”
“The earliest diverging avialans are key to deciphering the evolutionary origin of the characteristic avialan morphologies that contributed to their first global-scale diversification in the Cretaceous and, more importantly, to revealing the increasingly complex evolutionary history of stem avialans.”
The newly-identified avialan species roamed our planet around 150 million years ago (Late Jurassic epoch).
Dubbed Fujianvenator prodigiosus, it may be the youngest known member of the Jurassic avialans.
“Fujianvenator prodigiosus was a pheasant-sized avialan with a lower hindlimb (tibia) that is twice as long as the thigh (femur), a previously unknown condition for non-avian dinosaurs,” the researchers said.
“This finding contrasts with other early avialans, which are thought to have been more arboreal and aerial in nature.”
According to the team,…
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