When a fossil preserves the full body of an animal in death position, observing it is like seeing a instant time in time. There are several fossils like this from Archaeopteryx – the oldest bird known – and now, a remarkable specimen that has been inaccessible to scientists for decades is offering unpublished evidence about the first bird’s flight capacity.
The researchers had long wondered how Archaeopteryx raised flight while most of its emplumated dinosaur cousins never left the ground, and some argued that Archaeopteryx was probably another glider than a true flying. The first fossils of this winged Wonder of the Jurassic were found in southern Germany for over 160 years and has been about 150 million years; To this day only 14 fossils have been discovered. But private collectors acquired some of these rarities, isolating the fossils of scientific study and impairing investigations into this crucial moment in the evolution of birds.
One of these fossils was recently acquired by Chicago’s Field of Natural History and provided answers to the old question about the Archaeopteryx flight. The researchers published a description of the specimen the size of a pigeon in the magazine Nature On May 14, reporting that Ultraviolet (UV) and Computerized Tomographies (TC) revealed soft tissues and structures never before seen in this ancient bird. The findings included penalties indicating that Archaeopteryx could make active flight.
While most archaeopteryx fossil specimens “are incomplete and crushed,” this fossil was missing only one digit and remained not flat, said the study’s main author, Jingmai O ”Connor, paleontologist and associated curator of fossil reptiles of the Field Museum. You really don’t see this in all other specimens, ”O’Connor told CNN . “We also have more fossilized soft tissues associated with our specimen than we have seen on any other individual.”
Fly sentences
Fossil fossil trainers and study co -authors, Akiko Shinya and Constance Van Beek, worked in the specimen for over a year. They spent hundreds of hours scanning and shaping bone positions in three dimensions; Removing limestone fragments; and using UV light to illuminate the boundaries between the mineralized soft tissue and the rocky matrix.
Its preparation – a process that took about 1,600 hours in total, estimated the “Connor – It was worth it. The researchers detected the first evidence in the Archaeopteryx of a group of flights called tertiary, which grow throughout the humerus between the elbow and the body and are an important component of all active flight in modern birds. Archaeopteryx had tertiary due to the length of his humerus, said O’Connor. But this is the first time such penalties were found in an Archaeopteryx fossil.
The surprises didn’t stop there. Stretched forms of finger pillows suggested that Archaeopteryx spent time foraging on the ground, as the pigeons and modern doves do. And the bones on the ceiling of your mouth provided clues about the evolution of a skull feature in the birds called cranial cinese, the independent movement of the skull bones in relation to each other. This feature gives the birds more flexibility in using their nozzles.
“It was a ‘wow!’ Behind the other, ”said O’Connor.
The discovery of tertiary in particular “is an extraordinary finding because it suggests that Archaeopteryx really could fly,” said Susan Chapman, an associate professor at the Clemson University Department of Biological Sciences in South Carolina. Chapman, who was not involved in research, studies bird evolution using paleontology and development biology.
“Archaeopteryx trainers of Chicago did an exceptional work in preserving not only the bone structure, but also of soft tissue impressions,” Chapman told the CNN by email.
“Due to its care, this almost complete specimen provides insights never before understood about this poultry teropod dinosaur transition fossil.”
However, Archaeopteryx could probably only fly over short distances, she added. Despite having tertiary penalties, there were certain adaptations to the motorized flight seen in modern birds, such as specialized flight muscles and an extension of the sternum bone called anchor to anchor these muscles, Chapman said.
An evolutionary turning point
The museum acquired this specimen of Archaeopteryx in 2022 and, at the time, the museum president and CEO, Julian Siggers, called him “the most significant fossil acquisition of the Field Museum since Sue, T. Rex, was destroyed.”
As a link between non -aviary theopod dinosaurs and the lineage that produced all modern birds, the evolutionary importance of Archaeopteryx was unquestionable. But in a way, the museum was making a big bet on this specific fossil, according to “Connor. He had been in particular hands since 1990, and his condition was unknown. When he arrived at the museum, scientists did not know what to expect,” O’Connor said.
“When I found that we would get an Archaeopteryx, I never imagined, not even in my crazy dreams, that we would end up with such a spectacular specimen,” said “Connor.“ This is one of the most important macroevolutionary transitions in the history of life on Earth, because this gives rise to the group of dinosaurs that not only survives the mass extinction of the end of the Cretáceous, but then becomes the diverse group of the most diverse group terrestrial vertebrates on our planet today. So this is a very, very important moment in evolution. ”
The importance of such specimens points out why scientific access should be prioritized about the private collection of fossils, Chapman added. When fossils are sold for profit and private display instead of study, “their preparation is often precarious, thus losing irreplaceable soft tissue structures,” she said. “In addition, the value of such specimens to understand evolution by humanity is lost for decades.”
Chicago Archaeopteryx probably preserves many other important details about bird evolution, Connor added. With an abundance of data already collected from the fossil and still ongoing analysis, its full story is yet to be told.
“There will be much more to come,” she said. “I hope everyone finds it as exciting as I do.”
This content was originally published in a rare fossil reveals secrets of the flight of the first bird known on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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