Oldest Jurassic fossil discovery sheds new light on bird origins

An artist’s impression of the Jurassic bird. Pic/Chuang Zhao

A short-tailed bird fossil, stated to be the oldest dating back about 150 million years, was discovered by Chinese scientists in east China's Fujian Province shedding a new light on the origin of the birds, official media here reported on Thursday.

The fossilised bird Baminornis zhenghensis was discovered in Zhenghe County, Fujian Province. Its short tail ends in a compound bone called the pygostyle, a feature uniquely present in modern birds.

This indicates that the body structure of modern birds emerged in the Late Jurassic Period, 20 million years earlier than previously known, suggesting that birds might have originated earlier than previously thought.

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