Jakarta – A husband and wife in Australia discovered bird footprints hundreds of millions of years old. This was discovered during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bird’s footprints were found around the state of Victoria, Australia. Details of the bird’s footprints are recorded in full in a journal published by PLOS ONE.
Quoted from detikInetAccording to the journal, these bird footprints suggest dinosaurs evolved into birds near the end of the Jurassic period. After that, early bird species developed into various new variants in the Cretaceous period around 145-66 million years ago.
Anthony Martin, a researcher from Emory University Atlanta, explained that almost all of the bird’s footprints were discovered by a researcher from Monash University, Melissa Lowery. The bird’s footprints were found between 2020 and 2022.
“During the COVID-19 pandemic, Lowery and her husband Adrian have been regularly walking along the beach looking for fossils, including fossil footprints. So I’m pleased to say that she’s not just finding fossil footprints, she’s finding lots of them,” Martin explained.
In total, Lowery traveled 27 tracks, 26 of the 27 tracks were bird footprint discovery sites. There are also a variety of bird footprints, from small to large birds.
“Bird footprints range from small to large, from about 2.75 to 5.5 inches,” Martin said.
Previously, bird fossils with various variants only existed in the Northern Hemisphere and were very rare in the Southern Hemisphere. This is a challenge for researchers to understand the distribution of ancient birds, as reported by Newsweek.
“Our study shows that various birds lived in Australia much earlier than we expected from their fossil record there and other parts of the Southern Hemisphere,” he said.
He also explained that the distribution of birds in the southern hemisphere was due to the fact that the Australian mainland was previously combined with South America, Africa and New Zealand in a continent called Ancient Gondwana.
“Because Australia was connected to Antarctica at that time, and this part of Australia was near the south pole, this is also the oldest passage of birds from previously polar environments,” he added.
Martin also explained that birds began to spread and become many variants 120 million years ago, not long after the emergence of the first bird species.
This article was published on detikInet with the title 120 Million Year Old Bird Tracks Found, Descendants of Dinosaurs
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2024-01-15 20:00:39
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