Early birdlike dinosaurs are thought to have lived lofty lives up within the bushes. However a newly found creature had surprisingly lengthy legs which will have made for a life on the run.
The leggy birdlike dino (Fujianvenator prodigiosus) lived about 150 million years in the past in the course of the Jurassic Interval, researchers report September 6 in Nature. That’s across the similar time as its distant cousin Archaeopteryx, one of many earliest recognized birds (SN: 3/13/18).
“It seems to be fairly just like Archaeopteryx … besides the legs,” says paleontologist Min Wang of the Chinese language Academy of Sciences in Beijing. “Fujianvenator has actually, actually lengthy legs.”
Wang and colleagues recognized the creature as one of many earliest recognized avialans — a bunch that break up off from the remainder of dinosaurs and finally turned birds. The primary avialans are key characters within the chook origin story. However little is thought about them, Wang says, because of the scant range of fossils discovered.
Early avialans found up to now, together with Archaeopteryx, are typically short-limbed, apparently geared up for shifting by the bushes. Pheasant-sized F. prodigiosus’ decrease leg bones had been twice so long as its thigh bones, a trait not discovered among the many different recognized birdlike dinosaurs.
Entombed amid mudstones and shales in what’s now southeastern China, the creature’s bones had been found alongside fossils of aquatic and semiaquatic species. These clues point out that F. prodigiosus inhabited a swamplike surroundings. It in all probability dashed after prey like in the present day’s ostriches or waded by water like a primitive crane, Wang says.
The primary avialans weren’t all tree dwellers, he says. “It’s not the complete image.”
