Here's the abstract from Science:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/312/5780/1640
Guy Leahy
--- Phil Bigelow <bigelowp@juno.com> wrote:
>
> The press seems to have interpreted the reduced
> medulary cavities/air
> sacs as a "primitive" feature, when it looks (to me
> at least) like a
> specialization for diving and wading (aka, character
> reversal).
>
> What do the authors say about this? Yes? No?
>
>
> <pb>
> --
> Stigmata free since 1972.
> Oh wait....maybe it was only a Ketchup stain.
>
>
>
> On Thu, 15 Jun 2006 12:41:52 -0700 (PDT) Guy Leahy
> <xrciseguy@sbcglobal.net> writes:
> > Fossils show living birds descended from waterfowl
>
> > By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
> > 1 hour, 32 minutes ago
> >
> > A set of 110-million-year-old fossils from China
> is
> > the earliest example of a modern-looking bird and
> > strongly suggests ancestors of all living birds
> were
> > waterfowl, researchers said on Thursday.
> >
> > The pigeon-sized bird probably resembled a tern or
> a
> > loon, the researchers said. Called Gansus
> yumenensis,
> > it would have been an accomplished flyer and diver
> and
> > could well be one of the ancestors of modern
> birds,
> > the researchers report in Friday's issue of the
> > journal Science.
> >
> > "Every bird living today, from ostriches ... to
> bald
> > eagles, probably evolved from a Gansus-like
> ancestor,"
> > Matthew Lamanna of Carnegie Natural History Museum
> in
> > Pittsburgh told a news conference.
> >
> > Peter Dodson, professor of anatomy the University
> of
> > Pennsylvania, who oversaw the research, said,
> "Gansus
> > is very close to a modern bird and helps fill in
> the
> > big gap between clearly non-modern birds and the
> > explosion of early birds that marked the
> Cretaceous
> > period, the final era of the Dinosaur Age."
> >
> > The five skeletons come from an exceptionally rich
> > fossil bed in China's Gansu Province, in a poor
> > farming area near Changma, 1,200 miles west of
> > Beijing.
> >
> > In the Cretaceous period, 100 million years ago,
> it
> > would have been a lake, surrounded by lush plant
> life,
> > filled with crocodiles and fish, and with
> dinosaurs
> > and early mammals prowling on land.
> >
> > Now the lake bed survives as layers of rock.
> >
> > "You can walk up to a rock and peel off sheet
> after
> > sheet like paper until you get to a fossil," said
> > Jerald Harris of Dixie State College of Utah.
> >
> > Hai-lu You of the Chinese Academy of Geological
> > Sciences was studying at the University of
> > Pennsylvania when many earlier fossil birds were
> > discovered in China's northeastern Liaoning
> Province.
> > He remembered that the rock beds in Gansu were
> similar
> > and took an expedition there.
> >
> > They struck paleontological gold and quickly
> gathered
> > five nearly complete fossils of the early bird.
> >
> > A computer program reconstructed the bird
> evolutionary
> > tree and suggests the birds that gave rise to
> modern
> > birds were waterfowl.
> >
> > Gansus looks more like a modern bird than some
> birds
> > that lived later in the Cretaceous period.
> >
> > Its wings, legs and webbed feet closely resemble
> those
> > of living loons and diving ducks, with a few
> > exceptions. The birds had not yet evolved the
> hollow,
> > air-filled bones that make modern birds to light
> and
> > nimble, and it still had tiny claws at the end of
> its
> > wings that probably would have made it slightly
> clumsy
> > in flight, Harris said.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
>
>