This 150-million-year-old bird had dinosaur teeth and a strange secret

A 150-million-year-old fossil discovered in China reveals a bizarre early bird with sharp teeth, a dinosaur-like claw, and a body built for life on the ground rather than flight. Scientists believe it represents the earliest known example of flight loss in birds, overturning assumptions about how these animals evolved. This 150-million-year-old bird had dinosaur teeth and a strange secret.

Rather than developing increasingly sophisticated flight abilities, some of the earliest birds appear to have taken a very different evolutionary path, including losing the ability to fly altogether. The newly identified species, Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis, lived during the Late Jurassic period (150-148 million years ago). Described in a study published in Nature, the crow-sized creature provides evidence that early bird evolution was much more complex than scientists once believed.

Instead of evolving primarily to become better flyers, ancient birds were adapting to a variety of environments and ways of life, including those that favored living on the ground. Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Fujian Institute of Geological Sciences uncovered the fossil in the recently recognized Zhenghe Fauna of Fujian Province in southeastern China. According to their findings, Yuezhuornis represents the earliest known example of a bird lineage losing its ability to fly.