This is the smallest ancient bird. It lives with giant dinosaurs.

In this photo, you can see that this old and young bird is about the size of a grasshopper. A new study found that about 654.38+0.27 billion years ago, grasshopper-sized birds lived with some of the largest animals (including sauropods) walking on the earth. When it was alive, the chicken, which was less than 2 inches (5 centimeters) long, weighed only 0.3 ounces (8.5 grams)-about one-fifth the weight of a golf ball. This makes it one of the smallest birds in the recorded dinosaur era. The researchers said that almost all the skeleton fossils of this bird have been preserved, making it a treasure of paleontology, providing people with an observation of the enantiomer of this bird, which is an extinct subclass of birds. It often grows after its teeth and fingers with claws on its wings hatch from eggs. [Bird ancestors: dinosaurs who learned to fly]

It is not clear whether this bird is a newly discovered species or a previously identified species, such as Lake Concorde or Iberian puffins. They are another ornithine bird found in the same place. Researchers at the Las Hoias fossil site in central Spain said,

But the fact that this bird has no name has not stopped researchers from studying it. They said that members of the research team used synchrotron radiation to image this sub-micron sample. (Micron or micron is one millionth of a meter. In contrast, a strand of hair is about 50 to 100 micron in diameter.

This is a map image of phosphorus (left), and next to it is a photo of fossils (right). "The new technology provides paleontologists with unprecedented ability to study irritating fossils," said Fabian Noel, a paleontologist at the Interdisciplinary Center of Paleontology at the University of Manchester and the Alde Dinopolis Museum of Paleontology in Spain.

Analysis shows that the bird died shortly after hatching from the egg. In addition, the researchers found that the chicken sternum (sternum) has not yet developed into hard and strong bones, and most of them are made of cartilage. They say this means that Cretaceous chicks may not be able to fly after death. In addition, the ossification pattern of this bird is very different from other ornithine chicks found over the years. The researchers said that this shows that the development strategies of these ancient birds are more diverse than previously thought.

This false color composite image shows which elements in fossils are revealed by synchrotron radiation. The red area is iron, the green area is silicon, and the blue area is phosphorus. (Yang Qiyu Knoll), but researchers say that although this newly discovered bird may not fly, it does not necessarily depend on its parents' food and care. Although some modern chickens are "altruistic", which means that they need the help of their parents, others, like chickens, are "precocious" or mostly independent.

This bird was not the only feathered creature about1.200 million years ago. Fossil remains show that about this time, a waterfowl coughed up the first bird particle in history. In addition, the researchers also found rod-shaped and cone-shaped fossils in the eyes of birds about 65.438+0.2 billion years ago, which shows that at least some ancient birds can see colors. The previous report on life science is now in the Palaeontological Museum of La Mancha in Castilla, Cuenca, Spain. Today (March 5th), it was published online in the journal Nature Communication.

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