New Study Reveals Diet of Earth’s Earliest Bird – Jeholornis

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Beijing, Bolong.id – A Chinese paleontology team identified a diet from the stomach contents of a 120-million-year-old fossil bird found in northeastern China.

The findings, published recently in the journal Nature Communications, provide evidence that Earth’s earliest bird called Jeholornis consumed the leaves of a plant that produces flowers and produces seeds in fruit.

Birds are believed to have played an important role in the origin of the angiosperms, the largest and most diverse group of plants that represent approximately 80 percent of all known living green plants in Earth’s modern terrestrial ecosystems.

Live birds and those seed-bearing plants show strong interactions across pollination and seed dispersal, but food records remain scarce in their early evolution.

Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences for the first time extracted fossil particles, mainly silicon dioxide, from the digestive tract in a nearly complete bird skeleton.

The sub-adult specimen of the ancient bird was excavated near Chaoyang City in western Liaoning Province in northeastern China, according to the study.

The yellow particles most likely came from magnolia leaves, according to the researchers.

“These findings also reveal how birds began to fly to tree branches to explore new ecological niches,” said Wu Yan, first author of the paper and researcher from IVPP.

Jeholornis’ mandibles further support a similar shape to other plant-eating birds, including the extant herbivorous bird, the hoatzin, according to the study.

“Our discovery strengthens the knowledge of early ecological relationships between birds and angiosperms from fruit or seed consumption and possible dispersal to utilization of the most abundant and common plant parts such as leaves for dietary purposes,” said Wu.

2023-08-03 05:12:00
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