Fossil of 99m-year-old bird with unusually long toes found

Ancient bird’s foot is so distinctive palaeontologists declare it a new species

Nur Pirbhai

Thu 11 Jul 2019 16.00 BSTLast modified on Mon 15 Jul 2019 11.58 BST

The fossilised remains of a bizarre, ancient bird that had middle toes longer than its lower legs have been found in a lump of amber from Myanmar.

The elongated toe resembles those seen on lemurs and tree-climbing lizards, and suggests an unusual lifestyle for some of the earliest birds that lived alongside the dinosaurs, researchers said.

“We have the leg of a little 99-million-year-old bird, preserved in amber, that shows a foot morphology unlike any known previously,” said Jingmai O’Connor, a vertebrate palaeontologist and co-author of the study at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The foot was so distinctive that O’Connor and her team declared the bird, which was probably about the size of a sparrow, a new species, naming it Elektorornis chenguangi. The first part of the name translates to “amber bird”. It is the first bird species to be recognised from amber.

The bird’s foot had four toes, with the third measuring 20% longer than the bird’s lower leg bone, and 41% longer than its second toe.

Scientists compared the bird to the only other known species that has such disproportionately long digits: the aye-aye, a type of lemur which uses its elongated fingers to pry larvae and insects out of tree trunks. The researchers believe that Elektorornis might have used its toes for similar purposes.

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In a first, fossil bird found with unlaid egg – via Mark Raines

“I couldn’t even sleep at night,” the lead paleontologist says of her reaction to the discovery.

BY MICHAEL GRESHKO

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.

Read on

WHY SCIENTISTS TURNED THIS TAXIDERMY BIRD INTO A ROBOT

AUTHOR: MATT SIMON

06.01.18

09:00 AM

THIS WOULD BE a whole lot harder if biologist Gail Patricelli didn’t have an excellent sense of humor. Because I’m expected to sit here like a professional and not guffaw at her invention: A real-life fembot, which is probably not what you’re imagining but instead a taxidermied bird stuck on wheels. It tears around a table in her lab, turning its head back and forth, stopping periodically to bend up and down, as if pecking at the ground. Patricelli laughs as she steers it around, which I take to mean I’m allowed to laugh too.

The fembot (Patricelli’s name for the contraption) is serious science, though, a machine that’s helping her tease apart the wild—and wildly complex—mating ritual of the sage grouse, a species under threat. Because it turns out it’s pretty easy to trick a male sage grouse into trying to mate with a robot.

The male sage grouse is perhaps the only thing more absurd than a female robotic sage grouse. When they gather to display in a mating arena known as a lek, they sound more like sci-fi than anything remotely bird-like—a shreeet of a passing laser blast, and a low pop of, well, your guess is as good as mine (see video above). Males also inflate patches of thin skin on their chests. “They have a whole bunch of muscles on their chest that allows them to manipulate this like an elaborate balloon animal show,” Patricelli says.

Females are comparatively drab, which makes turning one into a convincing robot easier, though far from simple. It begins with a specimen that met an unfortunate end by way of car or powerline. Meaning, it’s going to need some reconstructive surgery. “I do my best to try to make it look realistic,” Patricelli says. “I have learned a lot and spent a lot of time in the arts and crafts section.”

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99 Million-Year-Old Baby Bird Trapped in Amber Discovered in Myanmar

By Hannah Osborne On 6/8/17 at 10:11 AM

Researchers in Myanmar have discovered a 99 million-year-old baby bird encased in amber. The ancient hatchling died when it was just a few days or weeks old after a blob of sticky tree resin fell on it, leaving half of its body frozen in time.

Xing Lida, from the China University of Geosciences, led an international team of researchers in analyzing the three-inch specimen. Their study, published in the journal Gondwana Research, will help scientists better understand the toothed birds that lived alongside dinosaurs—and how they differ from birds living today.

The amber encases the bird’s skull, neck, a partial wing, a hind limb and one foot. The hatchling would have belonged to a group of birds called enantiornithines, that lived during the Cretaceous period, 145 to 65 million years ago. They died out during the mass extinction event that killed off the dinosaurs.

The National Geographic Society’s Expeditions Council partly funded the research. The fossil was mined from the Hukawng Valley in northern Myanmar.

Scientists discovered the bird was unusual in several ways—the structure of its wings was very similar to those seen in modern flying birds—but it retained some features that are seen in more primitive theropods, the group of dinosaurs from which modern birds emerged.

Chen Guang, curator of a museum in Yunnan and owner of the specimen, told Xinhua : "Many people thought it was a lizard. But the scales, thread-like feathers and sharp claws on the feet were so noticeable that I thought they must belong to a bird.”


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Fallen Somali Spy Drone Was Disguised as a Huge Bird

Turns out, biomimicry is a pretty good way of spying on people.

Nickolaus Hines

July 19, 2016

Most of the time when people ask if it’s a bird, a plane, or Superman, it’s just a plane. Sometimes, though, it’s a war-zone drone disguising itself with biomimicry.

A drone camouflaged as a large black bird fell out of the sky in Mogadishu, Somalia on May 1. No one is completely sure who it belongs to, or how it fell from the sky, but local news services point to Somalia’s National Intelligence and Security Agency.

The drone’s design is remarkably lifelike — small propellers push the drone forward while the outer half of the wings maintain the illusion by flapping. It wouldn’t pass close inspection, but it’s far more likely to sneak overhead unnoticed than a military grade Reaper or Predator drone.

It’s not the first, and surely won’t be the last Mother Nature-inspired spy technology, because nature is the true OG of camouflage. Biodiversity has long served as inspiration for subterfuge, from the Greek’s Trojan Horse to this year’s GoatMan. The Trojan Horse wasn’t meant to be confused with an actual horse of course, and the only creatures GoatMan was trying to convince were goats, but it’s the same general concept: if you want success, emulate nature.

Read on … 

Bizzare: Bird Turns To Woman In Lagos

MATTHEW DIKE— May 22, 2014

A bizzare occurrence took place in Ajegunle area of Lagos State yesterday, when a bird that was flying in the sky, fell and transformed into an old woman.

Those who witnessed the incident which occurred on Ojo Road expressed shock at the development.

A witness who only gave his name as Emeka narrated that he was sitting in front of a compound with his lover when they saw three black birds in the air flying as if they were playing and he jocularly told his lover, Kemi that two of the birds could be male, fighting over the only female one. He said barely had they finished laughing over the joke when one of the birds fell and landed on a moving pick-up van belonging to the Eko Electricity Distribution Company, while the rest flew away.

Emeka said the bird then, fell on the floor and suddenly turned into an old woman, with blood gushing out of her forehead, as she rolled on the road.

He said a large crowd was attracted to the scene and the woman confessed to being a witch from Ibadan and that she came for a meeting in Lagos and was going back when the incident occurred.

The source said the woman told the bewildered crowd that they missed their way which was why they were hovering in the air till daybreak, adding that she fell because of tiredness.

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Fossil Hunter, And His 95-Million-Year-Old Bird, Land At New Perot Museum

Imagine finding a few pieces of bone that lead to the identification of a new species. That’s what happened to one amateur North Texas fossil hunter whose discovery goes on display with Saturday’s opening of the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas.

Kris Howe, of Carrollton, has been hunting fossils since he was 5. It’s something he did with his father, who taught him how to read the landscape and identify locations where the remains  might have collected millions of years ago.

He’s especially partial to an old river bed near Lake Grapevine where he stumbled across the fossils that would earn him recognition in the world of paleontology.

“If you look down the edge of this exposure you can see a difference in the color," Howe says as he retraces his path. “That area in between is an ancient riverbed. If you had something that would be deposited it would be in the riverbed typically."

Howe remembers walking the ridge five years ago when he saw something unusual poking up through the loose, crumbling shale.

“There was one little bone and a couple of feet from there was another little bone and that’s all really you could see,” he says. “I didn’t know what they were."

So Howe took the bones to paleontologist Tony Fiorillo, who's now the curator of fossils at the Perot Museum.

Continued:  http://keranews.org/post/fossil-hunter-and-his-95-million-year-old-bird-land-new-perot-museum

Women claim dead animal found in rice package

GOOCHLAND, VA (WWBT) -

Two women say they found a dead animal carcass in their Uncle Ben's Ready Rice packet. They purchased the rice in Goochland.

These pictures in the slide show show what Chris Browning and Brooke Pleasants say came out of the rice. The women think it is a bird, but say state inspectors are testing to see what it is.

"I was ill," said Browning, describing the scene as whatever it was plopped onto her plate. "Just the smell alone was enough to…cause it looked like a cooked creature."

"It has a beak and you could see it's eyeball," added Pleasants. "It was clearly visible that it was a bird."

They say they just opened the rice package and what looked like a bird fell out onto their plate.

"It smelt like rotten flesh just like, just death and pure death," said Pleasants. "Death for days."

"I couldn't even think about eating," added Browning.

The women say they immediately called the store where they got it, Uncle Ben's and the state. The Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services stopped by to sample the rice.

Continue reading and watch video here: http://www.fox19.com/story/19598163/women-claim-dead-animal-found-in-rice-package