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The changing face of birds from the age of the dinosaurs

The fossil record traces the origin of the modern bird skull as birds evolved from their dinosaurian ancestors. Now the discovery of a bizarre fossil reveals a surprising diversion during this process of facial transformation.
  1. Daniel J. Field

    1. Daniel J. Field is in the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK.

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As living dinosaurs, birds are the product of a long and complex evolutionary history that has given rise to more than 11,000 living species1. The past decade has witnessed a surge of interest in the evolution of the avian skull — a structure that is hugely variable across the diversity of living birds2. However, our ability to test hypotheses of how and when key transformations of the bird skull took place is limited if we can’t incorporate fossils into evolutionary models. Writing in Nature, O’Connor et al.3 report a stunning fossil-bird discovery from the age of the dinosaurs that reminds us of the crucial value of fossils for casting light on unexpected complexities in avian evolutionary history.

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Nature 588, 221-222 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-03260-x

References

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  11. O’Connor, P. M. & Forster, C. A. J. Vert. Paleontol. 30, 1178–1201 (2010).

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  12. Li, Y., Ruta, M. & Wills, M. A. Syst. Biol. 69, 638–659 (2020).

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  13. Field, D. J., Benito, J., Chen, A., Jagt, J. W. M. & Ksepka, D. T. Nature 579, 397–401 (2020).

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  14. Longrich, N. R., Tokaryk, T. & Field, D. J. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 108, 15253–15257 (2011).

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