{"id":428101,"date":"2025-12-06T05:30:25","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T05:30:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428101\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T05:30:25","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T05:30:25","slug":"ancient-bird-swallowed-800-rocks-and-choked-to-death-scientists-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/428101\/","title":{"rendered":"Ancient Bird Swallowed 800 Rocks and Choked to Death, Scientists Say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Around 120 million years ago, a bird swallowed over 800 tiny stones and choked to death as a result. Paleontologists aren\u2019t sure why.<\/p>\n

Like many recent fossil \u201cdiscoveries,\u201d researchers with the Field Museum were browsing through a collection of old fossils when they noticed something that appeared to be an entirely new species.<\/p>\n

They found that it represented a new species of bird (and therefore dinosaur) and named it Chromeornis funkyi, or a \u201cFunky Chromeo bird,\u201d in honor of the electro-funk band. But the most striking thing about Chromeornis, according to the researchers, was its apparent cause of death: suffocation from swallowing rocks.<\/p>\n

\"ChromeornisA close-up of the fossil. The rocks swallowed by the bird are seen in gray. Credit: Jingmai O\u2019Connor\/Field Museum <\/p>\n

The fossil, discovered at the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in China, is the subject of an upcoming paper in Palaeontologia Electronica<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The story of an unlucky bird <\/p>\n

The researchers, led by Field Museum curator Jingmai O\u2019Connor, first encountered Chromeornis during a stroll through Shandong Tianyu Museum\u2019s bird fossil collection. They noticed a tiny, sparrow-sized chunk of rock preserving a fossil with features resembling a larger bird species called Longipteryx, O\u2019Connor recalled to Gizmodo in an email.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt had really big teeth at the end of its beak, just like Longipteryx, but it\u2019s a tiny little guy,\u201d she added in\u00a0a statement<\/a>. \u201cSo based on that, I knew it was something new.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"UntitledAn artist\u2019s illustration of Chromeornis\u00a0funkyi. Credit: Sunny Dror\/Field Museum <\/p>\n

But that was merely the beginning of the oddities seen in the fossil. When the team examined it under a microscope, they found \u201can unusual mass of stones\u201d inside the creature\u2019s esophagus, right up against the neck bones, O\u2019Connor noted in her email. Subsequent analyses of the rocks\u2019 placement and chemical compositions strongly suggested that they were indeed swallowed by the bird and could not have just gathered around it during fossilization.<\/p>\n

That said, birds swallowing rocks isn\u2019t unheard of\u2014certainly not to the researchers, who had previously studied this exact phenomenon. Species such as owls and chickens will add some rocks to their meal to grind it up in a muscular organ called the gizzard.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in the thousands of fossil birds in the same group as this little fossil, none have ever been found with gizzard stones,\u201d the researchers said in the release. So, the mystery deepened.<\/p>\n

Unlucky, sick, rocky <\/p>\n

Then again, the team wasn\u2019t averse to the possibility that the little bird could be the first of its kind to be found with gizzard stones. To check this hypothesis, the researchers tried comparing the volume, quantity, and size of the stones to actual gizzard stones identified in other fossilized birds. They also conducted a CT scan of Chromeornis to get a closer look at the fossil.<\/p>\n

\"ChromeornisResearchers examine the new fossil under a microscope. Credit: Field Museum <\/p>\n

\u201cWe found over 800 tiny stones in this bird\u2019s throat\u2014way more than we would have expected in other birds with gizzards,\u201d O\u2019Connor said in the statement. \u201cAnd based on their density, some of these stones weren\u2019t even really stones; they seemed to be more like tiny clay balls.\u201d<\/p>\n

Basically, these stones weren\u2019t performing any digestive functions for the bird, she added. So the team came up with another hypothesis: could it have been sick?<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen birds are sick, they start doing weird things,\u201d O\u2019Connor explained in the statement. \u201cIt swallowed too many, and it tried to regurgitate them in one big mass. But the mass of stones was too big, and it got lodged in the esophagus.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

All this said, we should add a note of caution. Paleontological findings are often open to interpretation, which has led to plenty of rediscoveries over the years. At the same time, it means most fossil descriptions\u2014including this one\u2014represent just one team\u2019s take. It\u2019s worth waiting for follow-up studies and independent analyses to see whether the broader paleontology community is on the same page about this freaky bird and how it died.<\/p>\n

Of birds long gone <\/p>\n

This strange yet tragic tale of Chromeornis speaks to a bigger picture of extinction and survival in prehistoric times, according to the researchers. Birds belonging to the same group as Chromeornis were presumably the most populous group of birds in the final chapters of the dinosaur era.<\/p>\n

Then the asteroid collision around 66 million years ago completely wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs, leaving behind the birds that have stuck around to this very day.<\/p>\n

\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 O\u2019Connor said in the statement. \u201cLearning about Chromeornis and other birds that went extinct could ultimately help guide conservation efforts today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Around 120 million years ago, a bird swallowed over 800 tiny stones and choked to death as a…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":428102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[19528,25054,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-428101","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-birds","9":"tag-paleontology","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115670983653733220","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}