Fossil suggests ancestral bird beak was mobile

The fossil at the heart of the study is a 67-million-year-oldjumble of bones recovered from Belgium that includes bits of the vertebral column, wings, shoulders and legs. Janavis expands our understanding of Ichthyornithes in several ways: depending on how the estimation is made, it is 2 to 13 times...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2022-12, Vol.612 (7938), p.35-36
Main Author: Torres, Christopher R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Birds
Bones
Cranium
Cretaceous
Dinosaurs
Evolution
Jaw
Mass extinctions
Maxilla
Palate
Skull
Vertebrae
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Summary:The fossil at the heart of the study is a 67-million-year-oldjumble of bones recovered from Belgium that includes bits of the vertebral column, wings, shoulders and legs. Janavis expands our understanding of Ichthyornithes in several ways: depending on how the estimation is made, it is 2 to 13 times larger than its better-known fellow ichthyornithine Ichthyornis, and is 10 million to 20 million years younger5, lingering in Europe until just before the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, around 66 million years ago, that wiped out all known dinosaurs except the ancestors of modern birds. In neognaths, the pterygoid forms mobilejoints with the bones around it, including the palatine, the quadrate and, in some birds, the base ofthe skull. [...]the bony palate is functionally decoupled from the rest of the cranium and provides the upper jaw with a remarkable range of mobility.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/d41586-022-03692-7