A new study, published in the scientific journal Current Biology on the 10th, shows that fossilized seeds were found in the stomach of one of the first birds to live on Earth, indicating that they ate fruit. The discovery differs from the hypothesis that these birds fed on fish, which arose from their beak containing several strong teeth.
The bird Longipteryx chaoyangensis lived more than 120 million years ago in what is now northeastern China and was discovered in 2000.
“THE Longipteryx “It’s one of my favorite fossil birds because it’s so weird—it has a long skull and teeth only at the tip of its beak,” says Jingmai O’Connor, associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum’s Neguanee Integrative Research Center and lead author of the studyin press release.
“Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the body, and tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the body. Longipteryx is 50 microns thick. This is the same thickness as the enamel of huge predatory dinosaurs like the Allosauruswhich weighed 4,000 pounds, but the Longipteryx is the size of a blue jay,” explains Alex Clark, a doctoral student at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago and co-author of the paper.
At the time when the Longipteryx was discovered, scientists suggested that its elongated skull, similar to that of the kingfisher, meant it was a fish-hunting bird. However, this hypothesis has been disputed by several scientists.
“There are other fossil birds, such as Yanorniswhich ate fish, and we know this because specimens have been found with preserved stomach contents, and fish tend to preserve well. Also, these fish-eating birds had many teeth, along their beaks, unlike how the Longipteryx “It only has teeth on the tip of its beak,” O’Connor says. “It just didn’t make sense.”
During a visit to the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in China, the researcher noticed that two specimens of Longipteryx They appeared to have something in their stomachs. So she consulted a fellow paleobotanist and associate curator of fossil plants at the Field Museum, Fabiany Herrera, who was able to determine that the small round structures in the birds’ stomachs were seeds from the fruits of an ancient tree.
However, because they live in a temperate climate, birds Longipteryx They probably did not eat fruit all year round, which raised suspicions that their diet was mixed and also included insects when fruit was not available.
The discovery marks the first time scientists have found any stomach contents from a bird in the group. enantiornithine in the Jehol Biota of China. “It’s always been strange that we don’t know what they were eating, but this study also suggests a larger problem in paleontology, that the physical characteristics of a fossil don’t always tell the whole story about what the animal ate or how it lived,” says O’Connor.
According to researchers, the new hypothesis is that the birds’ elongated beak Longipteryx served as a weapon, being used for aggressive displays. “Having a beak as a weapon makes sense, because it moves the weapon further away from the rest of the body, to avoid injury,” Clark points out.
“There are no modern birds with teeth, but there are these really cool little hummingbirds that have keratinous projections near the tip of their face that resemble what you see in Longipteryx and they use them as weapons to fight each other,” adds O’Connor.
The researchers hope that in addition to learning more about the life of a prehistoric bird, the research will help illuminate broader questions in paleontology about how much scientists can (or cannot) rely on skeletal features to tell the story of animal behavior.
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This content was originally published in 120-million-year-old fossil reveals how ancient birds fed on the CNN Brasil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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