Chinese fossil of bird with undersized wings scrambles avian evolution

Newly found Yuezhuornis is one of the oldest-known birds Crow-sized Jurassic bird lived 150 million years ago Its anatomy indicates it was more of a runner than flier By Will Dunham Oct 14 (Reuters) — Scientists have discovered the fossil of a crow-sized bird that lived in China roughly 150 million years ago and possessed undersized wings that may have made it more of a runner than a flier — a discovery that paints a more complicated picture of early avian evolution. The new Jurassic Period species, Yuezhuornis yangyuanensis, represents one of the earliest-known birds, similar in age to the famous Archaeopteryx from Europe. Yuezhuornis is puzzling for an early bird in that it seems already to have diminished the ability to fly in favor of running on the ground, perhaps somewhat like a roadrunner — a fast runner but clumsy flier that rarely takes to the air. "Yuezhuornis challenges the traditional paradigm that the avian body plan evolved almost exclusively under the selective pressures of flight," said paleontologist Min Wang of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who helped lead the study published on Wednesday i