A long-toed bird preserved in amber from Myanmar is the first of its kind.
An artist’s rendering suggests Elektorornis chenguangi used its long third toe to find food. But researchers don’t really know why the bird, preserved in amber, evolved the unique digit, which is longer than its entire lower leg bone. Smaller than a sparrow, a 99-million-year-old bird preserved in amber made some very big news in July.
“I’ve never seen anything like this, or even close,” says paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor of Beijing’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. O’Connor is a co-first author on the, a new species of Cretaceous bird known from a single partial specimen.has traits not seen in any other bird, living or extinct. The animal’s third toe is extremely elongated — longer than the entire lower leg bone.
These hairlike, yet also scalelike, structures are at the base of the bird's unique toe. Which brings us to the big question: How didWithout any similar bird to compare it with, O’Connor and colleagues looked to the only living animal with a single elongated digit: the aye-aye, a species of lemur that uses its long third finger to probe for insects in rotting wood. However, the mammal also has a mouth made for gnawing, so the parallels with a toothless bird only go so far.
This story was #36 in our top science stories of 2019. Editor's Note: This story has updated from an earlier version to include additional images.
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