2023-09-06 17:17:56
Reconstruction of the life of the avian theropod Fujianvenator prodigiosus of 150 million years. -ZHAO CHUANG
MADRID, 6 Sep. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A new 150-million-year-old avian theropod has been described from Fossils found in the Chinese province of Fujian.
Birds descended from theropod dinosaurs in the late Jurassic, but our understanding of the earliest evolution of the Avialae, the clade comprising all modern birds but not Deinonychus or Troodon, it has been hampered by a limited diversity of Jurassic fossils.
No definitive avial has been described to date, except in the Yanliao biota from the Middle-Late Jurassic of Northeast China (166-159 million years ago) and the somewhat younger German Solnhofen limestones, that preserve Archeopteryx.
Consequently, there is a gap of about 30 million years to the earliest known record of Cretaceous birds. However, Jurassic avians hold the key to deciphering the evolutionary origin of the characteristic avian body plan. And what is more important, they are the key to reconcile the phylogenetic controversy about the origin of birds.
the new species, called ‘Fujianvenator prodigiosus’, it presents a strange set of morphologies that it shares with other avians, troodontids, and dromaeosaurs, demonstrating the impact of evolutionary mosaicism on the early evolution of birds.
“Our comparative analyzes show that marked changes in body plan occurred along the line of early avians, largely driven by the forelimb, eventually leading to the typical avian limb ratio.” explains in a statement Dr. WANG Min of the IVPP (Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology), main and corresponding author of the study, published in Nature.
“However, Fujianvenator is a rare species that diverged from this main trajectory and evolved into a strange hindlimb architecture“, it needs.
The strikingly elongated lower leg and other morphologies, in combination with other geological observations, suggest that Fujianvenator lived in a swampy environment and was a high-speed runner or long-legged wader, representing an ecology hitherto unknown to early avians. .
“Besides the Fujianvenator, we have found other vertebrates in abundancesuch as teleosts, testudines and choristoderes,” says XU Liming of FIGS, lead author of the study.
During the Late Jurassic-Early Cretaceous, southeast China experienced intense tectonic activity due to subduction of the paleopacific plate, resulting in widespread magmatism and coeval fault-trough basins, where the Fujianvenator was found. This geological background is essentially the same as that of the Late Jurassic in north and northeast China.where the oldest Yanliao Biota is preserved.
“The extraordinary diversity, the unique composition of the vertebrates and the paleoenvironment clearly indicate that this locality documents a terrestrial fauna, which we have named the Zhenghe Fauna,” comments ZHOU Zhonghe of the IVPP, a co-author of the study.
In situ radioisotopic dating and stratigraphic studies circumscribe the Zhenghe fauna to the period between 150 and 148 million years ago. Therefore, the Fujianvenator documents one of the stratigraphically youngest and geographically most southern members of the Jurassic avians.
The discovery of the Zhenghe Fauna opens a new window into the planet’s Late Jurassic terrestrial ecosystem, and the joint IVPP-FIGS research team plans to continue its exploration of Zhenghe and nearby areas.
#Fujianvenator #link #evolution #birds