China's Jurassic fossil discovery sheds light on bird origins

Groundbreaking discovery in East China's Fujian province reveals the oldest confirmed bird fossil from the Jurassic period.

A research team led by professor Wang Min from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has discovered two bird fossils in Jurassic-era rocks from Southeast China's Fujian province.

The rocks, dating back approximately 149 million years, fill a spatiotemporal gap in the early evolutionary history of birds and provide the strongest evidence yet that birds were diversified by the end of the Jurassic period. The study was published in science journal Nature on Thursday.

Birds are the most diverse group of terrestrial vertebrates. Certain macroevolutionary studies suggest that their earliest diversification dates back to the Jurassic period (approximately 145 million years ago). However, the earliest evolutionary history of birds has long been obscured by a highly fragmentary fossil record, with Archaeopteryx being the only widely accepted Jurassic bird.