{"id":220008,"date":"2025-12-07T11:06:17","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T11:06:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/220008\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T11:06:17","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T11:06:17","slug":"i-immediately-knew-it-was-a-new-species-scientists-discover-a-new-ancient-winged-reptile-and-reveal-its-gruesome-fate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/220008\/","title":{"rendered":"“I Immediately Knew It Was a New Species”: Scientists Discover a New Ancient Winged Reptile, and Reveal its Gruesome Fate"},"content":{"rendered":"

Researchers from the Chicago Field Museum have discovered a new species of bird-like dinosaur<\/a> that thrived during the Cretaceous<\/a> and became extinct 66 million years ago. An examination of the fossilized<\/a> remains also revealed that the ancient bird<\/a> likely choked to death on hundreds of tiny stones.<\/p>\n

Although the team has a health-related theory to explain the stones\u2019 presence in the animal\u2019s throat, they acknowledge that the precise reason may never be known.<\/p>\n

According to Jingmai O\u2019Connor, the associate curator of fossil reptiles at Chicago\u2019s Field Museum and the project\u2019s leader, as soon as she laid eyes on the approximately 120-million-year-old specimen, she knew she was likely looking at a previously undocumented species of winged dinosaur<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are thousands of bird fossils at the Shandong Tianyu Museum, but on my last trip to visit their collections, this one really jumped out at me,\u201d O\u2019Connor said<\/a>. \u201cI immediately knew it was a new species.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"newThe unlucky fossil bird, preserved with over 800 tiny rocks in its throat (visible as the gray mass next to the left of its neck bones). Image Credit: Photo courtesy of Jingmai O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n

When the researcher examined the specimen more closely, she found it shared several traits with a large fossil bird called Longipteryx. However, this species appeared to be much smaller, with the research team comparing it to the size of a modern sparrow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had really big teeth at the end of its beak, just like\u00a0Longipteryx, but it\u2019s a tiny little guy,\u201d O\u2019Connor explained. \u201cSo based on that, I knew it was something new.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because O\u2019Connor is a fan of the bad Chromeo, she named her discovery Chromeornis. Still, while the researcher was excited to have found a new species of extinct dinosaur, close-up examination of the specimen also presented the researchers with a mystery. Lodged in the creature\u2019s throat were what appeared to be hundreds of tiny stones.<\/p>\n

\"newClose-up of the mass of rocks in the throat of Chromeornis (the rocks are the gray mass just to the left of the neck bones). Image Credit: Courtesy of Jingmai O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI noticed that it had this really weird mass of stones in its esophagus, right up against the neck bones,\u201d O\u2019Connor explained. \u201cThis is really weird, because in all of the fossils that I know of, no one has ever found a mass of stones inside the throat of an animal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to their location and overall chemical composition, the researcher soon realized that the newly discovered dinosaur must have swallowed the stones while still alive, rather than the rocks simply washing up near its body. Because some birds are known to swallow tiny rocks and store them in a muscular stomach called a gizzard to aid digestion, the team decided to test whether these were gizzard stones. This included comparing the size, composition, and location of ancient dinosaur-bird fossils containing gizzard stones to those in the newly identified fossil\u2019s throat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had quantified the average volume of the stones, the number of stones that these other fossil birds had in their gizzards, the size of the gizzard stone mass compared to the total size of the bird,\u201d says O\u2019Connor. \u201cWe CT-scanned this new fossil so we could compare it to these other birds with gizzards.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"newPaleontologist Jingmai O\u2019Connor examines Chromeornis under a microscope. Image Credit: Courtesy of Jingmai O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n

According to the team\u2019s statement, those tests revealed over 800 stones in the deceased animal\u2019s throat. O\u2019Connor said that it is \u201cmore than we would have expected\u201d in birds known to have gizzard stones. The density of the stones also seemed inconsistent with gizzard stones, with O\u2019Connor noting that some of the tiny stones weren\u2019t actually stones, but instead \u201cseemed to be more like tiny clay balls.\u201d<\/p>\n

After considering all the evidence as a whole, the researcher said her team could \u201cvery clearly say that these stones weren\u2019t swallowed to help the bird crush its food.\u201d Although the team cannot immediately conclude why the ancient, winged creature swallowed so many stones, O\u2019Connor suggested that the extinct animal may have been ill.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen birds are sick, they start doing weird things,\u201d she explained. \u201cSo, we put forth a tentative hypothesis that this was a sick bird that was eating stones because it was sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

If correct, O\u2019Connor suggests that the sick animal swallowed too many stones. When it tried to regurgitate them \u201cas one big mass,\u201d they became stuck in the esophagus, and the unfortunate creature suffocated. Whatever the reason they were swallowed in the first place, the researchers believe that the attempt to regurgitate the stones was likely what caused the dinosaur\u2019s death.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s pretty rare to be able to know what caused the death of a specific individual in the fossil record,\u201d says O\u2019Connor. \u201cBut even though we don\u2019t know why this bird ate all those stones, I\u2019m fairly certain that regurgitation of that mass caused it to choke, and that\u2019s what killed that little bird.\u201d<\/p>\n

Along with identifying a new species and solving a mysterious, 120-million-year-old death, O\u2019Connor said her team\u2019s findings can have implications for conservation efforts to protect at-risk species still alive today especially when one considers that these birds were the most successful of their time yet failed to survive the mass extinction event that killed off all the dinosaurs except those that survived and became modern birds.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring that environmental disaster, the enantiornithines went from being the most successful group of birds to being wiped out,\u201d O\u2019Connor explained. \u201cUnderstanding why they were successful but also why they were vulnerable can help us predict the course of the mass extinction we\u2019re in now.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLearning about\u00a0Chromeornis\u00a0and other birds that went extinct could ultimately help guide conservation efforts today,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

The study \u201cA new small-bodied longipterygid (Aves: Enantiornithes) from the Aptian Jiufotang Formation preserving unusual gastroliths\u201d was published in Palaeontologica Electronica.<\/p>\n

Christopher Plain is a Science Fiction and Fantasy novelist and Head Science Writer at The Debrief. Follow and connect with him on <\/strong>X<\/strong><\/a>, learn about his books at <\/strong>plainfiction.com<\/strong><\/a>, or email him directly at <\/strong>christopher@thedebrief.org<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

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