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Article: The lonely bird: claims of the earliest avian fossil launch a paleontologic flap. (Cover Story)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- August 17, 1991
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Sankar Chatterjee should be a happy man. A well-known paleontologist, he owns finder's rights to the world's only known specimens of Protoavis -- reputed to be the oldest bird ever discovered. According to Chatterjee, this discovery pushes back the origin of feathered fliers to about the same time as the appearance of the first dinosaurs -- the late Triassic period, 225 million years ago.
Such a drastic step backward would overturn the way a generation of scientists has viewed avian evolution. "If it were true, it would be one of the most dramatic discoveries ever made relating to the origin of birds," comments ornithologist Alan Feduccia at the University of ...