Have you ever wondered what it would be like travel back in time to the age of dinosaurs? If you stumble upon a time machine, remember to bring your binoculars. Birdwatching is a popular hobby today, with an around in the UK alone, and in our modern world there are a staggering of birds to spot.
Author
Abi Crane
Postgraduate Researcher in Palaeontology, University of Southampton
Despite the popularity of their modern-day descendants, we often forget about ancient birds because of their more famous dinosaur cousins.
Birds are actually . They are closely related to smaller, agile meat-eating dinosaurs such as the Velociraptor. Ancient birds came in a variety of forms, from ones with teeth and claws to species barely distinguishable from farmyard .
So, if you were to point your binoculars over the heads of Triceratops and , what could you spot? Here is a quick introduction to six of the most interesting ancient bird species.
Archaeopteryx
Archaeopteryx is from the Jurassic period. The discovery of Archaeopteryx fossils in Germany over 150 years ago provided scientists with the first clues about the link between dinosaurs and modern birds.
At first glance, the skeleton of Archaeopteryx is just like any other meat-eating dinosaur – sharp teeth, clawed hands and a long bony tail. Surrounding the skeleton of specimens such as the (discovered between ) however, are imprints of feathers which form a pair of distinctly bird-like wings.
But for many years, palaeontologists debated whether Archaeopteryx could have used these wings to fly. Scientists now think it is likely that Archaeopteryx could have flown, but only , like a pheasant. Recent technological advances have given us our first insights into dinosaur colour and studies of fossilised, pigmented cells have shown that Archaeopteryx had wing feathers.
Confuciusornis
This crow-sized bird had a beak like that of modern-day birds, but still had large, on its hands. It is thought that they lived in flocks, large numbers of which were killed by ash or gas in and preserved as fossils. Known from over from China, Confuciusornis is one of the most common fossil bird species.
Some of these birds had a longer than their body, while others lacked these long feathers and would have looked comparatively stumpy. Scientists think these long-tailed birds were the males of the species and those with . Like modern peacocks and peahens, the males probably used their extravagant tail feathers to woo the females.
Falcatakely
Discovered in 2020, , from Madagascar, would have resembled a small, buck-toothed toucan. Its oversized, banana-shaped bill only had teeth . Although we don’t know what this buck-toothed bird would have eaten, its close relatives ate a , including fruit, fish and even larger prey.
Scientists think that birds such as Falcatakely could fly the same day they , unlike birds today which spend their first weeks or months helpless in the nest.
Hesperornis
One of the weirdest birds from the age of dinosaurs, Hesperornis would have looked something like a six-foot-tall penguin with a beak full of . Its would have made T rex look like a weightlifter, so it definitely couldn’t have used them to fly.
Instead, Hesperornis used its oversized itself through the water like a modern cormorant. Out of the water, Hesperornis walked and probably couldn’t travel far overland.
Vegavis and Asteriornis
Towards the end of the dinosaurs’ reign, the earliest groups of modern birds began to appear. The first of these birds to be discovered was from Antarctica, which in the time of dinosaurs would have been rather than ice.
It was probably an ancestor of ducks and geese and one exceptional fossil of Vegavis even has a rare . Analysis of this fossil suggested that Vegavis couldn’t make a songbird melody but could have made simple noises such as goose-like honks.
Sixty-six million years ago, not long before the , which caused the extinction of the non-bird dinosaurs, lived . This quail-sized bird from Belgium was an ancestor of modern ducks and chickens. Although it would have looked unremarkable compared to the and it lived alongside, this may have been to its advantage.
Scientists think that the small size of birds such as Asteriornis helped them to survive the . Because smaller animals need less food and take less time to reproduce, these humble birds were able to survive and evolve into the birds you can see through your binoculars today.
Abi Crane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
