The transition from land-dwelling dinosaurs to flying birds is one of the most remarkable events in the history of life, involving changes in the skeletal, muscular and nervous systems, skin-derived structures and behaviour, said Wang, the study’s corresponding author and a co-first author.
Macro-evolutionary models suggest that birds originated and began diversifying during the Jurassic Period. However, the scarcity of bird fossils from this critical period has left scientists with limited direct evidence of how the characteristic bird body plan emerged.
