First birds had 'dino feet'
2005-12-02 13:49
Washington - The earliest birds emerged 150 million years ago with feet like dinosaurs, said a study published on Thursday, bolstering hypotheses that fowl descended from the giant lizards.
The feet and skull of the magpie-sized bird have features common to both living birds and dinosaurs from the late Jurassic period, said the study by Gerald Mayr and colleagues at the Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg in Frankfurt, Germany.
"Contrary to virtually all existing reconstructions of Archaeopteryx, the new specimen shows that the first toe was not fully reversed as in extant birds," the study said, pointing out that the bird could not perch very well.
The article published in the magazine Science describes the 10th and best-preserved specimen recovered from a limestone quarry in Bavaria, Germany.
As for the skull, it probably housed a bird brain, the scientists concluded.