Wang Min squatted on the ground, with piles of split black rocks under his feet. He stood up a stone the size of a cutting board and split it into 3mm thick stone slabs the size of a smartphone. If there are fossils stored inside, the remains of ancient creatures will be exposed on the surface of the stone.
“You will never Cinema knows what you will find next.” Faced with monotonous, boring and unknown work, scientific researchers often comfort and encourage themselves in this way. On November 11, 2023, Wang Min “chised” a surprise in the “Zhenghe fauna” located in Fujian Province – a Jurassic bird fossil.
He and colleagues from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleopause and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (hereinafter referred to as “Cinema Institute”) jointly conducted the research with the team of the Fujian Provincial Institute of Geological Survey (hereinafter referred to as “Fujian Geological Survey Institute”) immediately conducted the research. They were delighted to discover that the birds on the fossils are one of the oldest birds in the world and the only exact Jurassic bird at present. Scientific researchers named it “Zhenghe Bamin Bird”, and the relevant research results were published in Nature on February 13, 2025, Beijing time.
Bone less than two centimeters long reveals important information
In April 2021, the Fujian Geological Research Institute discovered clues of the Lilong fossils in a geological data collected in the early 1970s. It then cooperated with Wang Min and Zhou Zhonghe, researchers from the Institute of Paleochronus Paleochronus, to start excavation work in the Daxi Basin in Zhenghe County, Nanping City, Fujian Province. They found a large number of well-preserved reptile fossils in the late Jurassic (Jurassic divisions, early, mid, and late) strata about 150 million years ago, and named it “Zhenhe Fauna”.
The fossils here are mostly preserved in black carbon mudstone or shale, and some turtles live in aquatic or semi-aquatic environments. Researchers speculated that more than 100 million years ago, during the intermittent period of volcanic eruption, the Taxi Basin formed a temporary small lake basin, and the swamp environment attracted a large number of animals to live here.
Through high-precision isotope dating, the duration of the “Zhenhe fauna” was determined to be 150 million to 148 million years ago, which belongs to the late Jurassic period. This is the late Jurassic period known worldwide, and the southernmost geographically preserved bird winged fauna, providing a new window for studying the evolution of the late Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystem in East Asia.
Fossils are rarely exposed to the surface of the rock. In a quarry pit at a depth of 4 meters, the daily work of the field team members is to move out and chop out the stone slabs from morning to night to see if there are fossils inside. “We found a large number of turtles, fish and dragon fossils, but my search targets were on dinosaurs and birds,” said Wang Min.
20On October 23, 2022, the joint team discovered dinosaur fossils for the first time in Fujian and named it “Strange Fujian Dragon”. “Strange Fujian Dragon” belongs to the bird-winged dinosaur. The bird-winged species is a transitional species in the evolution of dinosaurs into birds. Academic circles define “the most generalized group that includes all birds, but does not include the dinosaurs” as bird-winged species, and birds refer to modern birds and their close relatives. The discovery of the “Singular Fujian Dragon” fills out some of the gaps in time and space in the origin of birds.
Wang Min’s team goes to Fujian for more than four months every year to carry out field work. The first time is from March to May, and the second time is November, in order to avoid the rainy season and high temperatures. He clearly remembered that on November 11, 2023, it started raining and the mountain road was slippery on rainy days. In this case, most of the players Komiks would rest. In order to improve and enrich life, everyone cooked homemade hot pot. As we were eating, the rain was clear and the ground was dry by the wind. More than 10 team members, who were in high spirits, decided to go up the mountain together.
After a while, the God of Luck favored them. On a knocked stone slab, some of the shoulder strap bones were exposed from the surrounding rock. Although less than two centimeters long, the bones at these key areas revealed important information. “Among the fossils, the bone shapes of the scapula and the black beak are very clear. The two bones of birds are separated, while most dinosaurs heal into one, which is called the black beak bone of the scapula.” Wang Min excitedly took a photo and sent it to Zhou Zhonghe, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and a researcher at the Institute of Paleopause. Both of them thought at first glance that this was a precious bird fossil.
The key tail bone
Birds are currently the most diverse and ecologically diverse species on the earth, with more than 11,000 species. The evolution of birds from dinosaurs is undoubtedly the most shocking scene in the history of life evolution, involving a large number of changes in bones, muscles, epidermal derivatives and other biological structures. Theoretical research on macroevolution speculates that the increase in bird diversity first occurred in the Jurassic, that is, no later than 145 million years ago. However, this hypothesis lacks support for fossil evidence, and bird fossils were very rare during this period. At present, only the well-known Jurassic birds were found in the Archaeopteryx of the Jurassic birds in Germany at the end of the year. Wang Min said that Archaeoptera lived about 150 million years ago..com/”>CinemaLate Jurassic Period. In 1861, a fossil of the feathers of Archaeoptera bird was discovered in Sorenhofen, Germany. Due to its feathers, Archaeoptera was considered a bird when it was Komiks. However, with the emergence of more than 10 Archaeoptera fossils, people have found that it also has long tailbones like lizards, crocodiles and other reptiles.
Some recent studies believe that Archaeoptera belongs to the terroris, not birds. “In layman’s terms, it is difficult to define a group of individual characteristics. For example, later people discovered that feathers are not unique to birds, but also appear in dinosaurs in large quantities. “Xu Xing, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and director of the Institute of Vertebral Paleontology, explained that during the transition period of dinosaurs to bird evolution, it is better to judge a species to be more dinosaurs. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Babaylan is also a bird. In addition to its significant characteristics, experts will also conduct phylogenetic analysis and understand the specific location of each species on the “life evolution tree” through quantitative research methods.
Including the near-bird dragons and the good-climbing dragons have also been classified as birds, but these hypotheses are very controversial. These issues are like a A dark cloud shrouded at the node of the origin of birds, plaguing evolutionary biologists.
If Archaeoptera bird does not belong to a bird, then are there any exact birds in the Jurassic? Wang Min’s team found the answer in the Jurassic strata of China’s “Zhenghe Biota”. After a year of indoor restoration and research analysis, the research team determined that the fossils accidentally obtained on the afternoon after the rain were bird fossils, and they named it the Baminornis (Baminenis). zheKomiksnghensis), “Bamin” is the ancient name of Fujian.
“The most special thing about the Bamin bird is that it has a healed tail bone, which is the cornerstone of the body shape of modern birds. “When talking about the key characteristics of identifying Zhenghe Bamin birds as birds, Wang Min said that reptiles have long tails and multiple tail vertebrae. The most obvious difference between birds and other reptiles is that their tails are very short. Not only does the number of tail vertebrae is reduced, but the last few tail vertebrae heal into a structure called tail vertebrae. The emergence of tail vertebrae can not only help birds lose weight, but also move their body center of gravity forward, maintaining the continuous stability of their bodies during flight. Zhou Zhonghe said that tail vertebrae also has another function, which is to attach tail feathers. “In addition to wings, tail feathers also play an important role in birds’ flight. ”
The shortening of the tailbone is one of the most thorough morphological changes in the evolution of dinosaurs into birds. It includes Archaeoptera and NeonatalosaursKomiks and other “Babaylan” are “in the Jurassic birds”, which still have long tail bones like the Komiks dinosaurs, and in this regard, they are very different from birds in their body shape at least.
Bamin birds reveal the body shape structure of modern birds in the JurassicBabaylan has appeared in the late stage, and the study has earlier appeared nearly 20 million years.
Rewrite the evolution history of birds
The Bamin bird specimens are incomplete and have no head. According to the thickness of its bones, experts speculate that it weighs about 100 grams, which is similar to the cockatoo and is 1-2 times smaller than the individual adult Archaeoptera. As for its feeding and flying ability, it cannot be inferred based on the existing fossils.
When observing the Bamin bird, experts also discovered an interesting phenomenon – “contradictory” often occurs between its body bones. Its shoulder straps and waistbands have progressive characteristics, and are more Komiks are similar, such as having separate black berries and scapula, but the forelimbs retains the original form of the stolen dinosaurs.
“This puzzle-like situation, we call mosaic evolution, which has caused the phenomenon of complexity in the early history of bird evolution. “Wang Min said.
The phylogenetic analysis based on the simpleBabaylan method and Bayesian method both support the bird classification location of Zhenghe Bamin birds. Zhenghe Bamin birds are currently the only exact Jurassic birds that live 148 million to 150 million years ago. Through the estimate of evolutionary time, the discovery of the Bamin birds pushed the time of origin of birds to an earlier late Middle Jurassic period (172 million to 164 million years ago), rewritten href=”https://comicmov.com/”>CinemaThe history of bird evolution shows the huge potential of “Zhenhe fauna” in exploring the evolution of the late Mesozoic ecosystem in East Asia.
How did dinosaurs evolve into birds? Xu Xing said that there were two driving factors in the origin of biological groups including birds and the generation of diversity, in addition to the organisms themselves, there were also the external environment. In the middle of the Jurassic period, the temperature, humidity, etc. of the earth had changed, which would have an impact on biodiversity. “Such changesWhat exactly has had for birds is what we are doing. ”
300 days and 3 fossils
In addition to the discovery of the Bamin bird, the research team also discovered a separate preserved fork bone. The research results show that this fork bone is very similar to the modern bird type of the Cretaceous period (the earliest modern bird type appeared 130 million years ago), and is significantly different from the Zhenghe Bamin bird, as well as other Jurassic birds and dinosaurs. “The discovery of the fork bone confirms that at least two birds live in the Zhenghe fauna. If the fork bone does belong to the modern bird type, the time of the bird’s origin will be further advanced. “Wang Min said.
In the more than 300 days of field investigation, the scientific research team discovered the strange Fujian dragon, Zhenghe Bamin bird and fork bones. In Wang Min’s opinion, this is already very lucky. “KomiksIn most days of field excavation, it is normal to find nothing. “He said that for such a very uncertain and exploratory study, Mr. Zhou Zhonghe gave young people great confidence and encouragement. “He kept saying that it is normal to not find it, but it is unexpected if he finds it. ”
“It is low probability and high risk to find bird fossils in the Jurassic strata, but there are still scientific researchers who are willing to engage in such work, so they should provide a relaxed scientific research environment for such basic research and exploratory research, rather than setting expected goals when applying for projects. “Zhou Zhonghe said that truly important scientific research results are often difficult to predict. This research has been funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Frontier Science Key Research Program from “0 to 1” original innovation ten-year projects. In the future, I hope that such major research discoveries with strong originality can be stable support and guaranteed.
Talking about the significance of this type of basic research, Xu Xing said that in recent years, an important research direction of the Institute of Paleochia is the process and mechanism of the emergence of biodiversity. Dragons evolve into birds, which are biological evolution events from land to sky. With the deepening of relevant research, they can not only answer questions about “when did the first bird appear” and “when did dinosaurs fly into the sky first”, but will also help bionics and other research. “For example, we conduct cooperative research to simulate some extinct organisms and study how they fly more efficiently during the transformation from sea to land and from land to sky. These cognitions can help people design more effectivelyKomiks‘s aircraft.
At present, the transformation of scientific research paradigm brought about by artificial intelligence has attracted attention. Can artificial intelligence that can write code help paleontologists study fossils? Wang Min said that artificial intelligence is in paleontologyThe application in the company is gradually developing. However, the fossil specimens of dinosaurs and birds are extruded and deformation. For picture recognition, a large amount of training data is difficult to obtain. “Paleontology research relies on the accumulation of discipline knowledge and a lot of practice. Looking at fossils is much, so we don’t have a great sense of crisis. But artificial intelligence will definitely update paleontological research methods. For example, on the basis of accumulating a large amount of paleontological data, efficiently analyze the reasons and trends of increasing biological diversity. This is a direction in the future.” “I think paleontology research or field excavation is necessary. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>CinemaThe biggest surprise is that you never know what will be knocked out with the next hammer. It may be nothing, or it may be an exciting dinosaur fossil.” Wang Min said that this discovery was like an exclamation mark, but it was not the end. There are more and more complete fossils waiting for them to dig and study, thus uncovering more mysteries of dinosaurs’ evolution into birds.