Palaeontology: Flightless Jurassic bird reveals early diversity (Nature)
Researchers have discovered a new Jurassic bird species, Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis, in China that was flightless and terrestrial. This finding challenges the assumption that all early birds were adapted for flight and suggests a wider diversity of ecological niches in early avian evolution.
Why it matters
It provides critical evidence for the evolutionary history of birds, showing that flight was not the sole defining characteristic of the earliest avialans.
A newly discovered Jurassic bird from China appears to have lived a land-based, flightless lifestyle, according to research published in Nature . The findings suggest that the earliest birds had a greater diversity of lifestyles than previously recognized, and that not all were adapted for flight.
Fossils of Jurassic birds, which first emerged 148–150 million years ago, are rare, which makes it difficult to understand how early birds first diversified. Flight is a defining feature of modern birds and is thought to have had an important role in their early evolution, but the scarcity of Jurassic fossils has made it difficult to understand how the earliest avialans lived.
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