October 25, 2004
1 min read
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preserved in an egg-shaped space, indicates that early birds were well-developed at birth. The 121-million-year-old fossil, unearthed in northeast China, displays a large skull, developed feathers and a hardened skeleton--all precocial features.
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preserved in an egg-shaped space, indicates that early birds were well-developed at birth. The 121-million-year-old fossil, unearthed in northeast China, displays a large skull, developed feathers and a hardened skeleton--all precocial features. The specimen bolsters the notion that birds with relatively undeveloped, or altricial, hatchlings evolved from species with precocial young. Indeed, features of the new specimen, described in the current issue of Science, suggest that it may have even been superprecocial.
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