Asteriornis ("Asteria's bird"[1]) is an extinct genus of bird from the Late Cretaceous of Belgium which is known from a single species, Asteriornis maastrichtensis. It was closely related to birds of the extant superorder Galloanserae such as chickens and ducks. Members of the genus were small, long-legged birds (~394 grams [13.9 oz])[1][2] that lived near the coastline and co-existed with more "primitive" types of birds such as Ichthyornis. Asteriornis is one of the oldest-known birds irrefutably belonging to the group Neornithes, which encompasses all modern birds. It possesses characteristics of both galliformes (chicken-like birds) and anseriformes (duck-like birds), indicating its position as a close relative of the last common ancestor for both groups.[1][3]
| Asteriornis Temporal range: Late Maastrichtian
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|---|---|
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| Skull in lateral view | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Infraclass: | Neognathae |
| Clade: | Pangalloanserae |
| Genus: | †Asteriornis Field et al. 2020 |
| Type species | |
| †Asteriornis maastrichtensis Field et al. 2020
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Asteriornis may shed light on why Neornithes were the only dinosaurs to survive the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Its coexistence with non-neornithean birds such as Ichthyornis implies that competition was not a primary factor for the extinction of non-neornitheans, which resembled modern birds in most respects but died out with other non-avian dinosaurs. Small size,[4] a terrestrial lifestyle,[5] and a generalist diet[6] have all been inferred as ecological advantages possessed by early neornithes, allowing them to survive and diversify in the wake of the extinction.[3][7] Asteriornis fulfills these qualities, suggesting that such suspicions were justified.[1] Asteriornis is also evidence against a different hypothesis stating that modern birds originated from southern continents. This was supported by biogeographic ancestral reconstructions using phylogenies[8] and the discovery of Vegavis (a possible neornithean from Antarctica),[9] but Asteriornis's presence in Europe suggests that modern birds may have been widespread in northern continents in their early evolution.[1]
Discovery and naming
editAsteriornis is based on specimen NHMM 2013 008, held in the Maastricht Natural History Museum (Dutch: Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht), which consists of an almost complete skull and fragments of leg bones and a radius. It was retrieved from four blocks of sediment found at the CBR-Romontbos quarry near Eben-Emael in the Maastricht Formation of Belgium,[1] and was first unearthed in 2000,[10] by amateur paleontologist Maarten van Dinther,[11] who donated it to the museum.[1] This geological formation is the namesake of the Maastrichtian stage, which was the last stage of the Cretaceous period and the Mesozoic era. It is dated to around 66.8 to 66.7 million years old,[12] less than a million years before the arrival of the asteroid that caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, killed off all non-avian dinosaurs (and many other animals), and began the Cenozoic era.[1]
The genus name, Asteriornis, was constructed from ornis, the Greek word for bird,[13] and from Asteria, a titan from Greek mythology, who was associated with falling stars, and about whom there is a famous myth in which she transforms herself into a quail. The Asteri part of genus name thus alludes to the Chicxulub impactor (a "falling star"), and also alludes to quails which are members of the galloanserans. The species name A. maastrichtensis is named after the Maastricht Formation.[1] The researchers who discovered and described the fossil gave Asteriornis the nickname "Wonderchicken", which was picked up by various news outlets.[10][14]
Description
edit
The beak was slightly downcurved and lightweight. Unlike galloanserans, the beak did not have any specialized connections to the rest of the skull, nor a hooked tip. Instead its front tip was slightly rounded. The skull was narrowest over the orbits (eye sockets), where the frontal bones were incised by a V-shaped part of the nasal bones. The bones forming the jaw joint were very galloanseran-like. The quadrate bone (the cranium's contribution to the jaw joint) connected to the skull roof via two pronounced knobs, which were adjacent to a third smaller knob, the tuberculum subcapitulare. The mandible (lower jaw) connected to the quadrate with a pair of sockets, and the rear end of the lower jaw had a large hooked rearward-facing retroarticular process as well as a smaller inward-facing medial process. All of these characteristics are considered unique to (or at least most common in) galloanserans.[1]
In some respects the skull seems more similar to galliform birds such as chickens and pheasants. These include unfused snout bones and nasal bones which fork in front of the eyes. In other respects it resembles anseriform birds such as ducks and geese. Such features include the hooked retroarticular process of the jaw and a postorbital process (the portion of bone forming the rear edge of the eye socket) which curves forward at its lower extent. These demonstrate a principle of evolution that animals close to the common ancestor of two groups share some similarities with each group.[1]
The radius fragment flattens and widens towards the wrist, where it possesses a large hooked bump. Leg bones are elongated and slender, similar in proportions and structure to modern ground-living birds. The femur has well-developed muscle ridges and a large, angular medial condyle. The tibiotarsus is widest towards the knee, while the tarsometatarsus is thinner and covered with ridges.[1]
Classification
editA phylogenetic analysis placed Asteriornis near the base of Galloanserae, an expansive superorder containing birds such as chickens, ducks, pheasants, and other types of fowl and gamebirds. The precise placement varied based on whether the analysis used parsimony or Bayesian protocol. Parsimony placed it as the sister taxon to Galloanserae, meaning that it was a distant relative of the last common ancestor of chickens and ducks. Bayesian protocol instead placed it within Galloanserae, specifically as the sister taxon to Galliformes. This means that it was more closely related to chickens than to ducks, but also that was not a direct ancestor of modern chicken-like birds.[1]
Classifying Asteriornis as a relative of chickens and ducks means that it is unequivocally a neornithean. This is important because Neornithes originated at the last common ancestor of all living birds, and corresponds to the term "bird" as it refers to modern-day animals. Pre-neornithean birds such as Ichthyornis, enantiornitheans, or Archaeopteryx generally resemble modern birds but retain primitive features such as teeth or wing claws.[3] Neornithean fossils are extremely rare from the Mesozoic age, and are generally fragmentary or poorly described. The oldest known neognath, specifically a stem-anseriform, is the presbyornithid Teviornis from the Nemegt Formation of Mongolia around 70 million years ago.[15] Vegavis from the Late Cretaceous (~66.5 Ma) of Antarctica was originally described as a relative of ducks and geese,[9] but the classification of vegaviids is controversial and some paleontologists do not consider it a proper neornithean,[16] or at least not an anseriform or a galloanserine.[17][18] Asteriornis is based on diagnostic and well-preserved skull material and its status is less unstable, so it can be considered among the oldest known undisputed fossil of a modern-style neornithean bird.[1]
At least one study in 2021 has recovered Asteriornis as a paleognath, albeit "with limited support".[19] Subsequent studies still support Asterornis as a neornithean closely related to or within Galloanserae based on morphometric and phylogenetic analyses.[20][21] A 2024 cladistic analysis placed Asteriornis within the crown-group Galloanserae, specifically as a stem-galliform, though reexaminations of its mandible suggested that it lacked a key galloanserine feature.[22]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Field, Daniel J.; Benito, Juan; Chen, Albert; Jagt, John W. M.; Ksepka, Daniel T. (18 March 2020). "Late Cretaceous neornithine from Europe illuminates the origins of crown birds". Nature. 579 (7799): 397–401. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2096-0. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 32188952. S2CID 212937591.
- ^ Field, Daniel J.; Lynner, Colton; Brown, Christian; Darroch, Simon A. F. (2013-11-29). "Skeletal Correlates for Body Mass Estimation in Modern and Fossil Flying Birds". PLOS One. 8 (11): e82000. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...882000F. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0082000. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3843728. PMID 24312392.
- ^ a b c Padian, Kevin (18 March 2020). "Poultry through time". Nature. 579 (7799): 351–352. doi:10.1038/d41586-020-00766-2. PMID 32188944.
- ^ Berv, Jacob S.; Field, Daniel J. (2018-01-01). "Genomic Signature of an Avian Lilliput Effect across the K-Pg Extinction". Systematic Biology. 67 (1): 1–13. doi:10.1093/sysbio/syx064. ISSN 1063-5157. PMC 5837713. PMID 28973546.
- ^ Field, Daniel J.; Bercovici, Antoine; Berv, Jacob S.; Dunn, Regan; Fastovsky, David E.; Lyson, Tyler R.; Vajda, Vivi; Gauthier, Jacques A. (2018-06-04). "Early Evolution of Modern Birds Structured by Global Forest Collapse at the End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction". Current Biology. 28 (11): 1825–1831.e2. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2018.04.062. ISSN 0960-9822. PMID 29804807.
- ^ Larson, Derek W.; Brown, Caleb M.; Evans, David C. (2016-05-23). "Dental Disparity and Ecological Stability in Bird-like Dinosaurs prior to the End-Cretaceous Mass Extinction". Current Biology. 26 (10): 1325–1333. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.03.039. ISSN 0960-9822. PMID 27112293.
- ^ Ksepka, Daniel T.; Stidham, Thomas A.; Williamson, Thomas E. (2017-07-10). "Early Paleocene landbird supports rapid phylogenetic and morphological diversification of crown birds after the K–Pg mass extinction". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (30): 8047–8052. Bibcode:2017PNAS..114.8047K. doi:10.1073/pnas.1700188114. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5544281. PMID 28696285.
- ^ Claramunt, Santiago; Cracraft, Joel (2015-12-01). "A new time tree reveals Earth history's imprint on the evolution of modern birds". Science Advances. 1 (11): e1501005. Bibcode:2015SciA....1E1005C. doi:10.1126/sciadv.1501005. ISSN 2375-2548. PMC 4730849. PMID 26824065.
- ^ a b Clarke, Julia A.; Tambussi, Claudia P.; Noriega, Jorge I.; Erickson, Gregory M.; Ketcham, Richard A. (20 January 2005). "Definitive fossil evidence for the extant avian radiation in the Cretaceous" (PDF). Nature. 433 (7023): 305–308. Bibcode:2005Natur.433..305C. doi:10.1038/nature03150. ISSN 1476-4687. PMID 15662422. S2CID 4354309.
- ^ a b Giamio, Cara (March 18, 2020). "What to Name the Oldest Modern Bird Fossil? Wonderchicken". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 19, 2020. Retrieved March 19, 2020.
- ^ "Oldest fossil 'Wonderchicken' found at Maastricht by Lab Technician Maarten van Dinther".
- ^ Keutgen, Norbert (December 2018). "A bioclast-based astronomical timescale for the Maastrichtian in the type area (southeast Netherlands, northeast Belgium) and stratigraphic implications: the legacy of P.J. Felder". Netherlands Journal of Geosciences. 97 (4): 229–260. doi:10.1017/njg.2018.15. ISSN 0016-7746.
- ^ ὄρνις. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
- ^ KOUMOUNDOUROS, Tessa (March 20, 2020). "This 'Wonderchicken' Could Be The Oldest Modern Bird Fossil, And a True Survivor". ScienceAlert.com. Archived from the original on March 20, 2020. Retrieved March 20, 2020.
- ^ Marjanović, D. (2021). "The Making of Calibration Sausage Exemplified by Recalibrating the Transcriptomic Timetree of Jawed Vertebrates". Frontiers in Genetics. 12. 521693. doi:10.3389/fgene.2021.521693. PMC 8149952. PMID 34054911.
- ^ Mayr, G.; De Pietri, V.L.; Scofield, R.P.; Worthy, T.H. (2018). "On the taxonomic composition and phylogenetic affinities of the recently proposed clade Vegaviidae Agnolín et al., 2017 ‒ neornithine birds from the Upper Cretaceous of the Southern Hemisphere)". Cretaceous Research. 86: 178–185. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2018.02.013. hdl:2328/37887. S2CID 134876425.
- ^ Acosta Hospitaleche C, Worthy TH (2021). "New data on the Vegavis iaai holotype from the Maastrichtian of Antarctica". Cretaceous Research. 124. 104818. Bibcode:2021CrRes.12404818A. doi:10.1016/j.cretres.2021.104818. S2CID 233703816.
- ^ Álvarez-Herrera, G. P.; Rozadilla, S.; Agnolín, F. L.; Novas, F. E. (2024). "Jaw anatomy of Vegavis iaai (Clarke et al., 2005) from the Late Cretaceous Antarctica, and its phylogenetic implications". Geobios. 83: 11–20. doi:10.1016/j.geobios.2023.03.004. S2CID 259955013.
- ^ Torres, Christopher R.; Norell, Mark A.; Clarke, Julia A. (2021). "Bird neurocranial and body mass evolution across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction: The avian brain shape left other dinosaurs behind". Science Advances. 7 (31). Bibcode:2021SciA....7.7099T. doi:10.1126/sciadv.abg7099. PMC 8324052. PMID 34330706.
- ^ Kuo, Pei-Chen; Benson, Roger B. J.; Field, Daniel J. (2023). "The influence of fossils in macroevolutionary analyses of 3D geometric morphometric data: A case study of galloanseran quadrates". Journal of Morphology. 284 (6): e21594. doi:10.1002/jmor.21594. PMID 37183494. S2CID 258367829.
- ^ Brocklehurst, N.; Field, D. J. (2024). "Tip dating and Bayes factors provide insight into the divergences of crown bird clades across the end-Cretaceous mass extinction". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 291 (2016). 20232618. doi:10.1098/rspb.2023.2618. PMC 10865003. PMID 38351798.
- ^ Crane, A.; Benito, J.; Chen, A.; Musser, G.; Torres, C. R.; Clarke, J. A.; Lautenschlager, S.; Ksepka, D. T.; Field, D. J. (2024). "Taphonomic damage obfuscates interpretation of the retroarticular region of the Asteriornis mandible". Geobios. doi:10.1016/j.geobios.2024.03.003.