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Re: Jeholornis: Two-Tailed Wonder
From: Ben Creisler
bcreisler@gmail.com
Many thanks to Jason for posting the new Jeholornis paper.
Note some additional information:
Free supplementary pdf with photos:
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2013/10/02/1316979110.DCSupplemental/pnas.201316979SI.pdf
News stories:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131007-two-tailed-dinosaur-bird-jeholornis-paleontology/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn24335-prehistoric-avian-had-unique-dualpurpose-tail.html#.UlNvi1B6YYE
On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 6:44 PM, Jason Brougham <jaseb@amnh.org> wrote:
> News today of a more proximal tail fan in Jeholornis:
>
> Jingmai O’Connor, Xiaoli Wang, Corwin Sullivan, Xiaoting Zheng, Pablo Tubaro,
> Xiaomei Zhang, and Zhonghe Zhou
> Unique caudal plumage of Jeholornis and complex tail evolution in early birds
> PNAS 2013 ; published ahead of print October 7, 2013,
> doi:10.1073/pnas.1316979110
>
> We describe the presence of essentially two functional tails in the Early
> Cretaceous Jeholornis (the second most primitive bird)—one like that of some
> modern birds with a fan-shaped tract of feathers over the proximal tail
> vertebrae and another distal frond like that of feathered dinosaurs such as
> Caudipteryx and Microraptor. We suggest that the unique “two-tail” plumage in
> Jeholornis probably evolved as the result of complex interactions between
> natural and sexual selective pressures and served both aerodynamic (flight
> and balance, etc.) and ornamental functions (communication/display, etc.).
> Our aerodynamic analysis also provides a plausible functional explanation for
> the elongation of the boney tail in Jeholornis relative to Archaeopteryx.
>
> http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/10/02/1316979110.abstract?sid=8ba0510d-473b-46ef-9aa7-b4dcf8d88096
>
>