Tuesday, May 12, 2015

All Hail Grandaddy Bird!

Seems they've found the earliest member of the family of modern birds, Ornithuromorpha. This ur-bird, Archaeornithura Meemannae, pushes back the origin of modern bird species by six million years, to 130.7 million years ago. And scientists say that it has some bird features that are actually *more* modern than those of species we used to think were the earliest...which means that there's probably an even earlier common ancestor to all of them.


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