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Ducks are ancient
Scientists have found more fossils of ancestors of birds in China lately:
When you eat a duck next time, you may be eating something straight out of ancient history.
Fossil experts in China have unearthed a 110-million-year-old bird that is strikingly similar to today's birds, considering that it lived alongside dinosaurs.
The ducklike diver, known to science as Gansus yumenensis, shows advanced features not common in the fossil record until much more recently.
The discovery supports the view that key characteristics of modern birds evolved quickly and early, long before the demise of the dinosaurs.
It is also indirect evidence that the common ancestor of all today's birds was, like Gansus, adapted to an aquatic lifestyle.
Chinese and American paleontologists located the exquisitely preserved remains in mudstone slabs formed by sediments deposited on an ancient lake bottom.
The ducklike diver, known to science as Gansus yumenensis, shows advanced features not common in the fossil record until much more recently.
The discovery supports the view that key characteristics of modern birds evolved quickly and early, long before the demise of the dinosaurs.
It is also indirect evidence that the common ancestor of all today's birds was, like Gansus, adapted to an aquatic lifestyle.
Chinese and American paleontologists located the exquisitely preserved remains in mudstone slabs formed by sediments deposited on an ancient lake bottom.
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