Now, tiny feathers encased in fossilised poop may help scientists find the answer. One of the biggest mysteries in the history of this planet is how some birds made it alive out of the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Some Birds Survived Asteroid That Killed Dinosaurs. Poop May Reveal How
Two minuscule, diamond-shaped scales from a fish called gar, which still exists today, were found in the remains and probably were part of the bird’s last meal. The remains include the best-preserved feather ever extracted from deposits dating back to the Mesozoic era, or the age of the dinosaurs. The bones found with the feathers inside the coprolite, or fossilised faeces, belonged to a small, flightless diving bird similar to modern loons that did not survive the mass extinction, as per the research. The creature was part of a group known as Hesperornithiformes, which is now extinct. Birds have descended from dinosaurs. The mystery is why all the descendants came from just one group of dinosaur-era birds called Neornithes, a close relative of Hesperornithiformes. However, Hesperornithiformes also lived by water, and they died out. When researchers imaged the fossilised faeces in a micro-CT scanner, they found that the specimen contained multiple leg bones and feathers. There was a central spine with a square cross section that would have helped make the feather lightweight yet stiff. Other feathers, however, were smaller and fuzzier and would not have been good at insulation. A similar pattern was found in birds from the Cretaceous called enantiornithines. These primitive feathers may have proved deadly for the hesperornithiforms once global temperatures dropped significantly after the asteroid strike.
The feathers were discovered in 2016 by David DeMar Jr., a palaeontologist with the University of Washington in Seattle.
Jingmai O’Connor, Chicago’s Field Museum’s associate curator of fossil reptiles told CNN that some of the feathers looked very similar to those found in modern-day birds.
The specimen found in Montana, United States, belonged to a bird that had once been eaten by a Tyrannosaurus rex or another predator, before the asteroid strike that started the mass extinction, as per a new study published in the journal Current Biology. Previously, scientists had stated that Neornithes species survived since they lived near water.
New Evidence on Bird Survival After Asteroid Impact
Recent findings suggest that differences in feather structure may have played a crucial role in the survival of the Neornithes, a branch of the bird family, during the catastrophic asteroid strike that led to the extinction of dinosaurs. O’Connor noted that to validate this theory, scientists require a Neornithes fossil from just before the impact. This discovery opens up the possibility that additional fossilized droppings, either in museums or yet to be discovered, could contain fragile remains that might provide further insights into the events surrounding the extinction of dinosaurs.
