Author: Carolyn Gramling / Source: Science News
This baby bird had barely hatched before it died 127 million years ago — and its lack of fully developed bony breastbone, or sternum, suggests it couldn’t yet fly. The tiny fossil, just a few centimeters long, is giving paleontologists a rare window into the early development of a group of extinct birds called Enantiornithes, researchers report March 5 in Nature Communications.
Previous studies of juvenile Enantiornithes have shown that the sternums of these birds ossified in a pattern different from modern and other ancient birds. The sternum’s ossification — a process in…
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