{"id":125550,"date":"2024-11-14T00:59:44","date_gmt":"2024-11-13T17:59:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=125550"},"modified":"2024-11-14T00:59:44","modified_gmt":"2024-11-13T17:59:44","slug":"small-bird-fossil-fills-gap-in-dinosaur-to-bird-brain-evolution-npr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=125550","title":{"rendered":"Small bird fossil fills gap in dinosaur to bird brain evolution : NPR"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"storytext\">\n<div id=\"resg-s1-34011\" class=\"bucketwrap image large\">\n<div class=\"imagewrap has-source-dimensions\" data-crop-type=\"\" style=\"&#10;        --source-width: 1024;&#10;        --source-height: 768;&#10;    \">\n        <picture><source srcset=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims3\/default\/strip\/false\/crop\/1024x768+0+0\/resize\/1100\/quality\/85\/format\/webp\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F86%2Fba%2F35cb3dad4f0e8270752fa8018e86%2F1-navaornis-in-hand-credit-stephanie-abramowicz.png\" class=\"img\" type=\"image\/webp\" data-template=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims3\/default\/strip\/false\/crop\/1024x768+0+0\/resize\/{width}\/quality\/{quality}\/format\/{format}\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F86%2Fba%2F35cb3dad4f0e8270752fa8018e86%2F1-navaornis-in-hand-credit-stephanie-abramowicz.png\" data-format=\"webp\"\/><source srcset=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims3\/default\/strip\/false\/crop\/1024x768+0+0\/resize\/1100\/quality\/85\/format\/png\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F86%2Fba%2F35cb3dad4f0e8270752fa8018e86%2F1-navaornis-in-hand-credit-stephanie-abramowicz.png\" class=\"img\" type=\"image\/png\" data-template=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims3\/default\/strip\/false\/crop\/1024x768+0+0\/resize\/{width}\/quality\/{quality}\/format\/{format}\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F86%2Fba%2F35cb3dad4f0e8270752fa8018e86%2F1-navaornis-in-hand-credit-stephanie-abramowicz.png\" data-format=\"png\"\/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims3\/default\/strip\/false\/crop\/1024x768+0+0\/resize\/1100\/quality\/85\/format\/png\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F86%2Fba%2F35cb3dad4f0e8270752fa8018e86%2F1-navaornis-in-hand-credit-stephanie-abramowicz.png\" class=\"img\" alt=\"Navaornis in hand.\" data-template=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/dims3\/default\/strip\/false\/crop\/1024x768+0+0\/resize\/{width}\/quality\/{quality}\/format\/{format}\/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F86%2Fba%2F35cb3dad4f0e8270752fa8018e86%2F1-navaornis-in-hand-credit-stephanie-abramowicz.png\" data-format=\"png\"\/>\n        <\/picture>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"credit-caption\">\n<div class=\"caption-wrap\">\n<div class=\"caption\" aria-label=\"Image caption\">\n<p>\n                <em>Navaornis<\/em> in hand.<br \/>\n                <b class=\"credit\" aria-label=\"Image credit\"><\/p>\n<p>                    Stephanie Abramowicz \/ Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County<\/p>\n<p>                <\/b><br \/>\n                <b class=\"hide-caption\"><b>hide caption<\/b><\/b>\n            <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>            <b class=\"toggle-caption\"><b>toggle caption<\/b><\/b>\n    <\/div>\n<p>    <span class=\"credit\" aria-label=\"Image credit\"><\/p>\n<p>        Stephanie Abramowicz \/ Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County<\/p>\n<p>    <\/span>\n<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The birds of today descended from the dinosaurs of yore. Researchers have known relatively little, however, about how the bird&#8217;s brain took shape over tens of millions of years.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Birds are one of the most intelligent groups of living vertebrate animals,&#8221; says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.esc.cam.ac.uk\/directory\/daniel-field\">Daniel Field<\/a>, a vertebrate biologist at the University of Cambridge. &#8220;They really rival mammals in terms of their relative brain size and the complexity of their behaviors, social interactions, breeding displays.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Now, a newly discovered fossil provides the most complete glimpse to date of the brains of the ancestral birds that once flew above the dinosaurs. The species was named <em>Navaornis hestiae<\/em>, and it&#8217;s described in the journal <a href=\"https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1038\/s41586-024-08114-4\"><em>Nature<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<aside id=\"ad-backstage-wrap\" class=\"ad-wrap backstage\" aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>Piecing together how bird brains evolved has been a challenge. First, most of the fossil evidence dates back to tens of millions of years before the end of the Cretaceous period when dinosaurs went extinct and birds diversified.<\/p>\n<p>In addition, the fossils of feathered dinosaurs that have turned up often have a key problem. &#8220;They&#8217;re beautiful, but they&#8217;re all like roadkill,&#8221; says <a href=\"https:\/\/nhm.org\/person\/chiappe-luis\">Luis Chiappe<\/a>, a paleontologist and curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. &#8220;They&#8217;re all flattened and there are aspects that you&#8217;re never going to be able to recover from those fossils.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The shape and three-dimensional structure of the brain are among those missing aspects.<\/p>\n<p>But in 2016, Brazilian paleontologist William Nava discovered a remarkably well-preserved fossil in S\u00e3o Paulo state. It came from a prehistoric bird that fills in a crucial gap in understanding of how modern bird brains evolved.<\/p>\n<p>The bird lived roughly 80 million years ago, some 10 to 20 million years before the dinosaur mass extinction event and tens of millions of years after <em>Archaeopteryx<\/em>, among the oldest bird-like dinosaurs, inhabited the Earth.<\/p>\n<p>The newly discovered species is a &#8220;relatively small bird, something the size of between a pigeon and a starling,&#8221; says Chiappe. &#8220;It would have been an active flier, fully feathered.&#8221;<\/p>\n<aside id=\"ad-secondary-wrap\" class=\"ad-wrap secondary\" aria-label=\"advertisement\">\n<\/aside>\n<p>&#8220;You probably would recognize it as a strange bird,&#8221; adds Field. &#8220;It wouldn&#8217;t look too out of place in the present day except if you look carefully at its wings, you might see that it had pointy claws protruding from them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The bird&#8217;s skull &#8220;is strikingly modern looking,&#8221; says Chiappe. &#8220;It gives you a very good understanding of the cranial anatomy of these early birds.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The researchers were able to CT scan this intact, delicate skull, allowing the team to digitally reconstruct the animal&#8217;s brain.<\/p>\n<p>Some parts were more dinosaur-like. &#8220;For instance, the portion of the brain that in modern birds is responsible for helping coordinate flight called the cerebellum is not very well developed in this new fossil,&#8221; says Field. Instead, features of the inner ear are greatly expanded, suggesting it used an alternative means of coordinating balance and flight.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, the cerebrum \u2014 the part of the brain associated with higher level cognition \u2014 was fairly big. It was much larger than that of the bird-like dinosaurs that came before and almost as large as modern birds.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It tells us these sorts of transitional birds,&#8221; says Field. &#8220;They may well have been very clever and indeed much more clever than anything that had previously come before.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Such cleverness would have likely helped these ancient birds find food or mates, he says. And more complex cognition could have supported a more complex social structure.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\r\n     style=\"display:block\"\r\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\r\n     data-ad-layout-key=\"-fb+5w+4e-db+86\"\r\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3711241968723425\"\r\n     data-ad-slot=\"7910942971\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script><br \/>\n<br \/><div data-type=\"_mgwidget\" data-widget-id=\"1660802\">\r\n<\/div>\r\n<script>(function(w,q){w[q]=w[q]||[];w[q].push([\"_mgc.load\"])})(window,\"_mgq\");\r\n<\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2024\/11\/13\/nx-s1-5189279\/small-fossil-big-implications-bird-brain-evolution\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Navaornis in hand. Stephanie Abramowicz \/ Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County hide caption toggle caption Stephanie Abramowicz \/ Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County The birds of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/?p=125550\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8628],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=125550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=125550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=125550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hotvideos24.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=125550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}