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Fossil bird has pygostyle!

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Fossil bird has pygostyle!

Postby Pajarita » Sat Nov 16, 2019 10:10 am

The size of a pigeon, this early bird is the first one found to have a pygostyle - a bony thingy that serves as anchor for tail feathers and muscles to move them (and which allows them to maneuver, land, take off, etc by moving, fanning, etc the rectrices) that dinos did not have but modern birds do and why this fossil is said to 'fill the gap' between them. PLUS the bones found were not flattened as fossil bones usually are but placed in a more 3 D manner so they could reconstruct the body with greater accuracy. So cool, right?!

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science- ... I5NDg5MgS2
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Re: Fossil bird has pygostyle!

Postby liz » Tue Nov 19, 2019 7:00 am

My son has figured out "which came first the chicken or the egg". It was the egg. The bird that laid it was not quite a chicken. It laid an egg that the first chicken came out of.
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Re: Fossil bird has pygostyle!

Postby Pajarita » Tue Nov 19, 2019 9:50 am

:lol: Well, I am sure it wasn't quite like that. For one thing, it was a very gradual thing - just like with any other domestication process because it always takes A LOT of generations. Saying that an animal that was not a chicken laid an egg from where a chicken came from is like saying that a wolf had a litter in which one puppy was a dog and not a wolf - and we all know it was not like that, right? And for another, the domestic chicken is a mix of two different wild species, the Red Jungle Fowl and the Gray Jungle Fowl, which still exist today and, in truth, they look almost identical to domesticated chickens. Actually, if you ask me, they are much prettier!

These is the Red Jungle Fowl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_junglefowl
and this is the Gray Jungle Fowl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_junglefowl

The difference between the wild animals and our domesticated chickens is more of function/practicality than actual looks. They have larger body mass (good for eating), they produce eggs earlier, more frequent and bigger (good for eating) and they are not as aggressive (good for handling) and cannot really fly (good for handling) while the wild fowl can (see this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpohgLC0siQ).
Pajarita
Norwegian Blue
 
Gender: This parrot forum member is female
Posts: 18701
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Types of Birds Owned: RoseBreasted too, CAG, DoubleYellowHead Amazon, BlueFront Amazon, YellowNape Amazon, Senegal, African Redbelly, Quaker, Sun Conure, Nanday, BlackCap Caique, WhiteBelly Caique, PeachFace lovebird, budgies,
Flight: Yes


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