125 Million Year Old Bird Fossil Found

Scientists have discovered the nearly complete skeleton and full plumage of a previously unknown bird that lived approximately 125 million years ago in China.

This new species, Hongshanornis longicresta, is one of the earliest known birds to have a full beak and no teeth. Its discoverers, Zhonghe Zhou and Fucheng Zhang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that an imprint of the bird's skeleton and plumage was preserved unusually well in the sandstone of Inner Mongolia in northeastern China.

This small relative of modern birds, which was named for the area's early Chinese society and the bird's distinctive raised crest, appears to have had long legs, short wings, and a pointed beak. Researchers believe H. longicresta lived by lakeshores, where it waded through marshes, fed on fish in the shallow waters, and evaded predators by quickly taking flight with its slim wings.

The discovery of this bird near an ancient lakeshore confirms that the aquatic environment played a key role in the origin and evolution of early birds, of which one branch eventually gave rise to existing birds near the Cretaceous/Tertiary boundary. It also provides information for understanding the differentiation in morphology, body size, and diet of the Early Cretaceous birds.

This research is detailed in this week's online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.