Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 7-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Largest bird from the Early Cretaceous and its implications for the earliest avian ecological diversification

Largest bird from the Early Cretaceous and its implications for the earliest avian ecological... With only one known exception, early Cretaceous birds were smaller than their closest theropod dinosaur relatives. Here we report on a new bird from the Early Cretaceous feathered-dinosaur-bearing continental deposits of Liaoning, northeast China, which is not only larger than Archaeopteryx but is nearly twice as large as the basal dromaeosaur Microraptor. The new taxon, Sapeornis chaoyangensis gen. et sp. nov., has a more basal phylogenetic position than all other birds except for Archaeopteryx. Its exceptionally long forelimbs, well-developed deltoid crest of the humerus, proximally fused metacarpals, relatively short hindlimbs and short pygostyle indicate powerful soaring capability and further suggest that by the Early Cretaceous ecological diversification of early birds was greater than previously assumed. Electronic supplementary material to this paper can be obtained by using the Springer LINK server located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-001-0276-9. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Naturwissenschaften Springer Journals

Largest bird from the Early Cretaceous and its implications for the earliest avian ecological diversification

Zhou, Zhonghe; Zhang, Fucheng
Naturwissenschaften , Volume 89 (1) – Feb 19, 2004
Download PDF
5 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/largest-bird-from-the-early-cretaceous-and-its-implications-for-the-rOTvY5aeeR

References (11)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 by Springer-Verlag
Subject
Life Sciences; Life Sciences, general; Environment, general
ISSN
0028-1042
eISSN
1432-1904
DOI
10.1007/s00114-001-0276-9
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

With only one known exception, early Cretaceous birds were smaller than their closest theropod dinosaur relatives. Here we report on a new bird from the Early Cretaceous feathered-dinosaur-bearing continental deposits of Liaoning, northeast China, which is not only larger than Archaeopteryx but is nearly twice as large as the basal dromaeosaur Microraptor. The new taxon, Sapeornis chaoyangensis gen. et sp. nov., has a more basal phylogenetic position than all other birds except for Archaeopteryx. Its exceptionally long forelimbs, well-developed deltoid crest of the humerus, proximally fused metacarpals, relatively short hindlimbs and short pygostyle indicate powerful soaring capability and further suggest that by the Early Cretaceous ecological diversification of early birds was greater than previously assumed. Electronic supplementary material to this paper can be obtained by using the Springer LINK server located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00114-001-0276-9.

Journal

Naturwissenschaften – Springer Journals

Published: Feb 19, 2004

There are no references for this article.