An ancient bird that flew through the skies of the southern hemisphere 115 million years ago could reveal new information about life during the age of the dinosaurs. The bird exhibited a tail looking like a ribbon, a characteristic thought to only be present in some species of the northern hemisphere.
Fossils of the Cretaceous bird were discovered in modern-day Brazil, but at that time, the landmasses were gathered into a pair of supercontinents, known as Laurasia (North America and Asia) and Gondwana, the body containing South America.
Roughly 5.5 inches long, the long-extinct bird has not yet been awarded genus and species names, although it does belong to the group Enantiornithes. This classification of birds includes a diverse collection of more than 50 species of birds that lived alongside some of the most successful dinosaurs of all time.
Around 115 million years ago, birds were experiencing some radical changes to their evolution. Some researchers believe finding an avian with a ribbon-like tail could have a major impact on theories of evolution during this time period.
Ribbon-like feathers are not seen in modern birds, making this fossil find even more valuable to paleontologists and ornithologists.
"These are weird feathers that occur in extinct birds. But they're on a separate line. They have nothing to do with modern feathers. It's fascinating," Richard Prum an ornithology professor from Yale University not involved with the study, said.
The animal that formed the fossil did not have a fully-formed skelton, and its eyes were relatively large for its head, characteristics suggesting the individual was a youngster. However, it had already developed a significant layer of plumage, suggesting maturity.
The fossil was found in the Araripe Basin in 2011, and is now the oldest-known find ever of a bird in Brazil. Other artifacts found at the basin date from between 100 and 200 million years before our time. Other fossils of birds from the same era as the newly-discovered specimen lack detail in their feathers.
The newly-discovered species is younger than the better-known "first bird" species of Archaeopteryx, which flew 150 million years ago during the late Jurassic Period.
Gondwana also included most of today's southern continents, including Australia, Antarctica and Africa, as well as the country India.
The tropicbird, a family of seabirds that appears to have no other known close relatives, have an elongated tail feather that is the closest that any bird living today possesses to the ribbon tail of the ancient species.
Discovery of the ancient bird in Brazil was published in the journal Nature Communications.
