Paleontologists Discover Oldest Feathered Dinosaur: Early Bird Beats Archaeopteryx

Move over, Archaeopteryx; you may no longer be top bird. Researchers have discovered an ancient fossil that preserves a Jurassic, feathered creature that's older than any other bird-like animal. The findings have revealed a little more about when birds first emerged on our planet.

The new Jurassic fossil was actually rediscovered in the archives of a Chinese museum. It was first found by a farmer in China's Lianing Province and had been unidentified until paleontologist Pascal Godfroit found it last year.

"It pushes [back] the origins of birds--or the origin of animals that are very closely related to the bird," said Luis Chiappe, a vertebrate paleontologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles who was not involved in the study, in an interview with the LA Times. "And that's quite exciting."

So what does the fossil look like? The creature, named Aurornis xui, probably lived in the ancient forest found during the Jurassic period. Possessing feathers and a beak, the creature measured about a foot and a half in length. It had small, sharp teeth and long forelimbs that probably helped it glide.

"In my opinion, it's a bird," said Godefroit at the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences in Brussels in an interview with Nature. "But these sorts of hypotheses are very controversial. We're at the origins of a group. The differences between birds and [non-avian] dinosaurs are very thin."

What's interesting is that after thorough study, researchers determined that Archaeopteryx and Aurornis belong in the same family. Known as the Avialae family, the group of dinosaurs is represented by the living birds of today.

Yet some still debate whether Aurornis really is the evolutionary forebear of the earliest birds. Some scientists believe that it could be part of a group of bird-like dinosaurs that were developing feathers and bird-like features, but never really became true birds.

"Around the origin of birds 160 million or so years ago, there were many fossils that were experimenting with birdness-getting more and more birdlike," said Chiappe in an interview with the LA Times. "What exactly the line is that made it to birds is not entirely clear...and this is just one candidate."

The fossil does reveal something else about ancient birds, as well. It means that powered flight powered by forelimbs, typical of birds, may have not just evolved once--but twice. It may have been subsequently lost or modified in some species, and probably emerged when the earliest birds took to the trees.

"According to our scenario, powered flight evolved along the avian lineage after its separation from other maniraptorans," said Andrea Cau, one of the researchers, in an interview with Discovery News. "Powered flight probably evolved after early birds acquired more arboreal adaptations."

Whether or not this new fossil actually is an early bird is still in question. Yet if it is, it could lead to new discoveries and new understandings about the ancient origins of birds.

The findings are published in the journal Nature.