In the evolutionary history of birds, there is a 70-million-year gap filled with questions. During this time, all the modern bird groups we know today

An intact 80-million-year-old fossil is the ‘Rosetta Stone’ that promises to decipher bird evolution

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2024-11-18 19:30:02

In the evolutionary history of birds, there is a 70-million-year gap filled with questions. During this time, all the modern bird groups we know today emerged, but science has yet to fully explain how the transition from the ancient, more dinosaur-like birds to modern birds occurred. Now, an analysis of a fossil with an unprecedented degree of preservation — belonging to a previously unknown bird species that lived in what is now Brazil 80 million years ago — could help illuminate how this process occurred. The discovery is being hailed as a “Rosetta Stone” for the study of bird evolution, as it may unlock many of the mysteries surrounding their evolution. The research findings were published in Nature last Wednesday.

Guillermo Navalón, a paleobiologist from Madrid at the University of Cambridge, is one of the lead authors of the study, alongside Argentine researcher Luis M. Chiappe. He was in charge of digitally reconstructing the fossil using a non-invasive process and was able to reveal the life appearance of Navaronis hestiae, named after Brazilian paleontologist William Nava, who discovered it in 2016. “This fossil is so unique that it answers many frustrations that scientists have had in bird research for a long time,” explains Navalón.

What makes this discovery so remarkable is that all previous fossils of extinct birds from the Enantiornithes group were found flattened, like a pancake, due to their delicate, hollow bones, which made preservation difficult. In contrast, Navaronis is nearly intact. This allowed scientists to reconstruct its skull and brain in three dimensions. While the brain tissue itself didn’t survive, the skull did, and since these animals — like humans — had bones closely surrounding the brain, researchers could examine the internal cavities. This allowed them to create a mold and replicate the soft tissue that would have been inside.

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