120-million-year-old fossils found in Japan reveal one of the oldest birds on the planet.
The almost intact skeleton, dating from the early Cretaceous period, was found inside a stone slab at a “dinosaur cemetery” near the town of Katsuyama in Fukui Prefecture, Japan. It is identified as belonging to a brand new primitive bird, Fukuipteryx prima.
According to Takuya Imai, lead author of the study, F. prima is about the size of a pigeon with gray-brown feathers. They can shake their tails and flap their wings, but their flight is not very good. This primitive bird lives in a flexible environment, with a temperate and warm climate.
“F. prima can fly but not very well. It mostly glides or flaps its wings to fly for a short time,” Imai said. Scientists currently do not have much information about their diet and their enemies.
F. prima is the most primitive bird of the Lower Cretaceous period found outside of China. Analyzes of fossils show that they share certain traits with Archeopercx, a genus of bird-like dinosaurs (a transition from feathered dinosaurs to modern birds) that lived around 150 million years ago.
