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Every day, scientists find out Surprising new information changes our understanding of ourselves Ancient world.
The latest innovation involves a bird with a large crane from the late Cretaceous period, the largest listing a new history of evolution curriculum.
In a study published Wednesday Natural, Researchers describe a previously unknown species, Falcatakely forsterae, An ancient bird with an unusually large crane similar to a modern duck.
Big bird – Fossils of this unknown bird species were first discovered by researchers in Madagascar.
But the fossil specimen was fragile and contained many small bones, so it wasn’t fully analyzed until 2017. But as the researchers selected the smaller pieces, they realized they found something truly special.
“When we started carefully removing the rock around those delicate bones, it became very clear that it was like, ‘Oh, well, we have something very clean here. Patrick O’Connor, says lead author of the University of Ohio research and anatomical sciences professor Inversion.
After removing the rock, the scientists simulated 3D data collection using microcomputer tomography scanners. Then they used 3D printing to create a replica of the bird’s skull.
“You know what anatomy is in this new animal, there’s a lot of digital modeling, you know,” O’Connor says.
The researchers named the species Falkadakeli (It roughly means “little flying sickle”) for its distinctive contoured face. They classified themselves Falkadakeli Like an enantiornithine bird, O’Connor says it was “a group of birds that lived during the time of the dinosaurs”. These birds often have teeth and claws on their wings. All known creatures are now extinct.
Yet, Falkadakeli Unlike other ancient birds that lived 65-250 million years ago. The birds of this era, known as the Cretaceous period, have different body shapes, but when it comes to their faces, they are identical.
Face Time – But with its long deep hook, Falkadakeli The mold is broken.
“Then we just realized Falkadakeli It has a different face shape than anything else involved, ”O’Connor says.
The large crane of this bird resembles a modern bird.
This is a strange discovery. Modern birds are very different from ancient birds. Anatomy helps explain the difference between the oldest birds Falcaque – And modern. It boils down to one bone in the skull: the premaxillary bone. It appears that ancient birds located on the top of a bird’s beak did not use this bone for feeding, whereas modern birds do.
“All the diversity in modern bird face shape is actually brought about by a bone called the premaxillary bone,” says O’Connor. “It’s this bone that makes this crazy difference through growth, giving you the wide range of face shapes we see around us today.”
Powered by Blogger Salary Unique face shape, the researchers wanted to understand, according to O’Connor, “what determines the shape of the face, not just in modern birds and endorphins.”
They compared the skeletal structure of the newly discovered bird with other organisms, including non-bird dinosaurs.
“We have a broader perspective. Well, we can see a whole range of animals that are relatively related to each other. Some of them are modern birds, some of them Mesozoic birds, and then non-avian dinosaurs are close relatives of bird radiation, “O’Connor says.
They found it out Falkadakeli It may have had a similar appearance to modern birds as a result of integrated evolution, which occurs when unrelated animals develop in similar ways and share the same characteristics. But unlike modern birds, the Falkadakeli Another skull bone receives its broad flagellum by expanding the maxillary bone.
“The point of aggregation is that it has a general overall shape, but it doesn’t do so by altering the same facial bones we see in modern birds,” O’Connor says. In contrast, this bird’s crane is close to the structure of one of the fiercest dinosaurs, the Velociraptors.
“We use what we have described as an ancient arrangement of the bone structure, which is very similar to things like the velociraptor or the microopter.”
A new path – The findings set a new path in the fossil record and boost scientists’ confidence in what ancient birds might have looked like.
“We never anticipated that there would be such a large and large bill, it would be based on Maxilla because we never saw it in the fossil record,” O’Connor says.
More importantly, this study changes our understanding of ancient birds and how they evolved.
“The birds that live in the Mesozoic are very different from what we know,” O’Connor says.
Summary: Mesozoic birds show significant differences in the size, flight adaptations and structure of feathers 1–4, but show relatively conserved patterns of crane shape and growth 5–7. Although neuron birds (i.e., the crown group) control 8,9 in facial development, unlike mesosum birds, they have relatively different crane shapes associated with a variety of feeding and behavioral environments. Here we describe a raven-sized stalk bird, the Folktagly Forstera gen. E SP nov., From the Late Cretaceous period in Madagascar, is the expression of a crane morphology superficially similar to that of previously unknown and different crown group birds (e.g., deacons) among Mesozoic birds. . The rostrum of the hawk is made up of an elaborate endendolar jaw and a small premossilla that bears the teeth. Morphometric analyzes of individual skeletal organs and the three-dimensional shape of the rostrum reveal an anatomical facial development similar to neonitilon, while maintaining an upper and premaxillary structure. The design and the increased height of the rostrum in Falcadelli reveal growth defects and an increase in morphological imbalance. The expression (and purported ecology) of this phenotype in a stemmed bird underscores that integration into a neonitin-like rostrum dominated by primoxilla is not an evolutionary prerequisite for crane expansion.
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