“I
couldn’t even sleep at night,” the lead paleontologist says of her reaction to
the discovery.
PUBLISHED MARCH
20, 2019
ABOUT 115
MILLION years ago in what's now northwest China, a female bird was on the
verge of motherhood. But somehow, her life on an ancient lakeshore took a
traumatic turn, triggering a pregnancy complication that killed the egg forming
inside her and may have even led to her death.
Entombed
ever since, this mother bird is now a paleontology milestone:
Named Avimaia schweitzerae, the newly described species is the first
fossil bird known to science that contains an unlaid egg.
“We were
not expecting anything interesting, but it turned out to be the first fossil
bird ever found with an egg inside its body,” says lead study author Alida Bailleul, a postdoctoral
researcher at China's Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and
Paleoanthropology (IVPP). “To me, that’s the funniest thing.”
Described
this week in Nature
Communications, the egg could shed light on reproductive
disorders in ancient birds. And if its pigments are preserved, the fossil could
reveal more about how ancient birds nested. Previous research has shown that
the colors and speckles on dinosaur eggshells may vary depending on the
dinosaur's nesting behavior, such as whether the species buries its eggs or
broods them. This pattern holds true in the only
dinosaurs alive today: birds.
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