Edited by Richard Walker, Saturday, 17 Jun 2017, 13:07
I wrote before about the mysterious and romantic-sounding opposite birds, who lived alongside the ancestors of modern birds for millions of year but then died out 55 Mya with all the large dinosaurs.
A recent paper describes an exciting example of an opposite bird preserved in amber. It was only very young when it became trapped, but seems to have been quite well developed, in keeping with the idea that opposite birds, unlike modern ones, fended for themselves as soon as they hatched.
The detail below gives an idea of how well the fine structure of the animal has been preserved.
Lida Xing et al., doi: 10.1016/j.gr.2017.06.001
There is a good article here about the fossil and what it suggests about the opposite birds.
An Opposite Bird in Amber
I wrote before about the mysterious and romantic-sounding opposite birds, who lived alongside the ancestors of modern birds for millions of year but then died out 55 Mya with all the large dinosaurs.
A recent paper describes an exciting example of an opposite bird preserved in amber. It was only very young when it became trapped, but seems to have been quite well developed, in keeping with the idea that opposite birds, unlike modern ones, fended for themselves as soon as they hatched.
The detail below gives an idea of how well the fine structure of the animal has been preserved.
Lida Xing et al., doi: 10.1016/j.gr.2017.06.001There is a good article here about the fossil and what it suggests about the opposite birds.