Chinese Researchers Say Archaeopteryx Is Not “Original Bird”

New research by Chinese scientists has thrown the winged Archaeopteryx off the evolutionary pedestal as the case study for evolution from dinosaur to bird.

AsianScientist (Jul. 29, 2011) – New research by Chinese scientists has thrown the winged Archaeopteryx – long thought to be the “original bird” – off the evolutionary pedestal as the case study for evolution from dinosaur to bird.

Since its 1861 discovery in Bavaria, just a few years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, most scientists have placed Archaeopteryx at the root of the broad group of proto-birds, known as Avialae, from which our avian feathered friends emerged.

Over the years, a few scientists have expressed doubts about the proto-birds, pointing out that the supposedly defining bird-like characteristics – feathers, the wishbone, three-fingered hands – could simply belong to small, feathery dinosaurs.

In the research paper published online this Wednesday in the journal Nature, a team of Chinese scientists discovered a new archaeopteryx-like theropod dinosaur species from lake deposits formed about 160 million years ago in northeastern China’s Liaoning Province.

By examining the fossil, the team led by Professor Xu Xing from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, concluded the new species is more “dino” than bird.

For example, its specialized feet have the highly extensible second toe characteristic of the Deinonychosauria, the group of bird-like dinosaurs that includes the carnivorous velociraptor.

The new dinosaur is named Xiaotingia zhengi in honor of Zheng Xiaoting, to recognize his efforts in establishing the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature as a repository for vertebrate fossils from China.

“The most exciting result from our research is that both Xiaotingia and Archaeopteryx are primitive deinonychosaurs rather than birds,” Xu said.

One of the most important jobs for the scientists now is to reconstruct a reliable family tree for birds and dinosaurs. They believe that the dinosaur-bird transition took place from a primarily herbivorous lineage leading to modern birds and a carnivorous lineage leading to velociraptors.

Other scientists say the identity crisis of Archaeopteryx has not been fully resolved.

“I don’t think this is going to be the last word on this subject. You take this new Chinese species out of the mix and the argument falls apart, so the new placement is precarious at best until further evidence is dug up,” says Thomas Holtz, a palaeontologist at the University of Maryland in College Park.

The article can be found at: Xu X et al. (2011) An Archaeopteryx-like theropod from China and the origin of Avialae.

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Source: Nature Publishing Group.
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