Photo Credit: LIDA XING/Newsweek
Evolution throws us curve balls sometimes.
An ancient bird was recently found fossilized in amber with a toe that was greater in length than its leg. It is said that the bird is over 99 million years old. The elongated toe resembles tree-climbing lizards, but was not very common during the time of the dinosaurs.
Jingmai O’Connor, a vertebrate paleontologist, named the bird Elektorornis chenguangi, with the first name meaning “amber bird.” This is the first bird to ever be discovered from amber, and it certainly was something that caught scientists off guard.
The bird’s foot contained four toes, with the third toe measuring 20% longer than the bird’s lower leg bone. This must have caused a lot of awkward walking for the bird. In addition to resembling tree-climbing lizards, scientists compared the bird to aye-aye, which is a type of lemur. The lemur uses its long fingers to pry larvae and insects out of tree trunks. It is believed that this bird used its toe for the exact same reason.
Scientists suspect that the bird spent most of its time in trees using the toe to cling to branches more easily. The bird’s leg was discovered in 2014 in the Hukawng Valley in Myanmar. Researchers studied the remains by CT-scanning the amber to produce a reconstruction of the foot. It compared most closely with a bird, making scientists certain that this was a bird.
Scientists will next be looking at the feathers found on the surface of the amber. They plan to look at the proteins and pigments to see how the bird adapted to its environment.
