Birds were nesting in the Arctic during age of dinosaurs, scientists discover | Archaeology


In Arctic To call out images of Polar Ullamcorper and seals, but 73m years ago was a dinosaur stomping ground. Now the fossil hunters say these wild animals shared their turf with the army to different birds.

Researchers believe in discovery more than 50 bird fossils a Prince Creek Formation in Alaska is the oldest of the birds niding in massage regions, pushing back on a more than 25m years.

“Braverest evidence for the Stress Nesting is a penguin colon from Eocene de Antarctica [that lived about 46.5m years ago]”Lauren Wilson, first responsible to work from Princeton University.

More than 200 kinds of bird nest in the Arctic today, when researchers are crucial members of ecosystem, help with the essentials such as the pollination and seed dispersions. The latest findings suggest their presence with no new.

“These new fossils fill a major gap in our understanding of the bird evolution,” said Path Patrick Druckenmiller, Director of the University of Alaska Museum of North and co-author study Published in Science.

While the first birds emerged in the late Jurassic, 150m years, and delicate nature of the bird bones means such animals are rare in the fossil record. “Prior to this work, and with the exception of a few steps, bird fossils have not known from Alaska,” said Druckenmiller.

The team to work in digging.

Discovery involved much more than good luck, with pain carefully excavating bones and both washing or material from small, sandy deposits to separate minimal fossils, more than 2mm in size.

“There was a word like a panning of gold, unless the bird bones of our rewards” said, Druckemiller.

Wilson added more of the bones of the embryos or hatchlings. At least a bird, he said, which is a group called Ichthyornhornhornhornhornhornhornhornohornhornohornhornohornhornohornhornhornohornhornohornhornohornornhornohornhornohornornhornhornness, with the researchers and found at least one member of the other extinct group called Hesperornos, foot, propelled divide birds and teeth.

Many of the fossils of toothless birds that can have a similar ducks. That, in the team note that signify, because features such as failure toothache are a neornithes, group that includes all living birds and their most recent common ancestor. It suggests to the prehistoric birds nesting in the arctic were relatives of modern birds.

Fossils were small, with more than 2mm in size.

Druckenmiller said that, as in the Arctic today, prince of Creek Ecosystem of 73m years would be experienced about six months continuous light in the summer, in which it would have been very green. To get the effects of the abundance of food. However, winter would have been cold.

” [winters were] It is not like a hard day, the year-round residents do not have to bear freezing temperatures, occasional snow, and four months of continued winter dark “said.

Wilson said new inventions showed birds were breeding in the Arctic, but he was uncertain if you have not spent in the winter, adding it very likely at least some of them were.

Steve Brusatte, professor of Palaeontology and development at the University of Edinburgh, who are not involved in the work, he says, while the fossils were found in the team we’re completely minusculely.

“These fossils show that the integral parts of these highest width many tens of thousands ago, and so that these communities are a long-term organizational history, not a recent Nov-term of modern times,” not a recent innovation modern, not a recent undergraduate new times, “he said.



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