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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
>
>