{"id":264450,"date":"2024-11-13T23:23:17","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T23:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/exquisite-bird-fossil-provides-clues-to-the-evolution-of-avian-brains\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:10:31","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:10:31","slug":"exquisite-bird-fossil-provides-clues-to-the-evolution-of-avian-brains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2024\/11\/13\/exquisite-bird-fossil-provides-clues-to-the-evolution-of-avian-brains\/","title":{"rendered":"Exquisite bird fossil provides clues to the evolution of avian brains"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The skeleton of Navaornis hestiae, an 80-million-year-old bird fossil<\/p>\n

S. Abramowicz\/Dinosaur Institute\/Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

An 80-million-year-old fossil bird<\/a> has been discovered with a skull so exquisitely preserved that scientists have been able to study the detailed structure of its brain.<\/p>\n

In both age and evolutionary development, the new species, named Navaornis hestiae,<\/em> is almost midway between the earliest known bird-like dinosaur, Archaeopteryx<\/em><\/a>, which lived 150 million years ago, and modern birds. It lived in the Cretaceous Period alongside dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus<\/em> and Triceratops<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The fossil, which bears a superficial resemblance to a pigeon, was found near Presidente Prudente, Brazil, in 2016 and was immediately recognised as significant because of the rarity of a full bird skeleton, particularly one of that age.<\/p>\n

But Daniel Field<\/a> at the University of Cambridge says it wasn\u2019t until 2022 that he and his colleagues realised the skull was so intact that they could possibly scan it and create a 3D model of its brain.<\/p>\n

High-resolution CT scanning allows palaeontologists to peer inside fossils.<\/a> \u201cThis involves careful \u2018digital dissection\u2019: separating out each individual component of the skull and then reassembling them into a complete, undeformed three-dimensional reconstruction,\u201d says Field.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe new fossil provides unprecedented insight into the pattern and timing by which the specialised features of the brain of living birds evolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Based on the team\u2019s reconstruction of the brain, Field says the cognitive abilities and flying capacity of Navaornis<\/em> were probably inferior to those of most living birds.<\/p>\n

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Artist\u2019s impression of Navaornis hestiae<\/p>\n

J. d\u2019Oliveira<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The portions of the brain responsible for complex cognition and spatial orientation aren\u2019t as enlarged as those of modern birds, he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough the cerebrum of Navaornis<\/em> is greatly expanded relative to the condition in a more archaic bird relative like Archaeopteryx,<\/em> it is not as expanded as what we see in living birds.\u201d<\/p>\n

The enlarged brains of modern birds support a huge range of complex behaviours, says Field, but understanding how their brains evolved has been challenging due to a lack of adequately complete and well-preserved fossil bird skulls from early bird relatives.<\/p>\n

\u201cNavaornis<\/em> fills a roughly 70-million-year-long gap in our understanding of how the distinctive brains of modern birds evolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

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[ad_1] The skeleton of Navaornis hestiae, an 80-million-year-old bird fossil S. Abramowicz\/Dinosaur Institute\/Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County An 80-million-year-old fossil bird has been<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":264451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[177],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}