This animal looks like a bird, but has a strange dinosaur bone

JAKARTA – The scientist has just analyzed the sample single fossil . Its age is 120 million years. Physically, the fossil animal is shaped like a bird. But, they have dinosaur skulls and bones. The research was revealed in the latest journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

Paleontologists suspect, this specimen will respond if the birds really come dinosaur .

Modern birds are now thought to be descended from large carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods that lived between 245 million and 65.5 million years ago. Included, Tyrannosaurus Rex.

However, scientists have not yet found an answer to how these changes occur.

This last fossil is called Cratonavis zhui. Scientists classify it as a cross between the long-tailed reptile Archeopteryx and today’s birds, Ornithothoraces.

Archeopteryx is known as the only fossil link between birds and dinosaurs. Why, having the feathery wings of a bird but the back of an angular, bony dinosaur.

Over time, more and more bird-like past reptiles began to emerge.

In the 1990s, scientists announced a classification of ornithothoraxes that included all modern birds and their closest ancestors.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences, the discoverer of the Cratonavis zhui fossil, conducted research using high-resolution computed tomography or CT scans.

The technology allowed them to digitally manipulate the specimen’s bones and reconstruct the original shape of the skull.

Indeed, deducing some of the functions related to dinosaurs. They also analyzed Cratonavis’ scapula, or scapula, and metatarsus, the long bone in the foot that connects the ankle to the toe, to understand more about the fossil’s bird-like body.

The study’s conclusions suggest that the skull of Cratonavis is morphologically nearly identical to that of dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus rex, rather than that of ordinary birds.

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“The primitive skull features indicate that most Cretaceous birds such as Cratonavis were unable to move their upper beak independently due to the presence of a braincase and mandible,” said Li Zhiheng , the lead author of the study.

The scapula of the animal, on the other hand, is important for the flight of a bird. This means that it helps Cratonavis show great stability and flexibility during flight. More research will continue to be done to answer whether T. rex is the ancestor of animals like chickens.

(And)