Researches find link between primitive and modern birds

"Most of the ancestors of birds from the age of dinosaurs are members of groups that died out and left no modern descendants. But Gansus led to modern birds, so it's a link between primitive birds and those we see today," Lamanna, a co-leader of the research team, said in a telephone interview.

Photo: Researches find link between primitive and modern birds

It was similar to loons or diving ducks, he explained, and one of the fossils even has skin preserved between the toes, showing that it had webbed feet.

"Gansus is the oldest example of the nearly modern birds that branched off of the trunk of the family tree that began with the famous proto-bird Archaeopteryx," added Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania, a co-author of the paper along with Lamanna, Hai-lu You of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, and others.

The remains were dated to about 110 million years ago, making them the oldest for the group Ornithurae, which includes all modern birds and their closest extinct relatives. Previously, the oldest known fossils from this group were from about 99 million years ago, the AP reports.

The fact that Gansus was aquatic indicates that modern birds may have evolved from animals that originated in aquatic environments, the researchers said.

The remains were found in an ancient lake bed near the town of Changma. Researchers split open slabs of mudstone to find them.