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Message:

> A new real bird finding in China:
> 
> https://www.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/rOo8HrgVnGDego919P0Y-WSJNewsPaper-3-1-2025.pdf
> 
> "FOR MORE THAN a century,  scientists believed that a fossil  of a winged dinosaur from the
>  Jurassic Period discovered 160 years ago in Germany represented the earliest birds.  Now, researchers have unearthed another creature from the same period that more  closely resembled the avians  of today—indicating that birds  evolved much earlier than previously thought.
> 
> "The newly discovered bird,  known as Baminornis zhenghensis, weighed about 3.5n  ounces and was about the size  of a common quail. It had a  short tail with some vertebrae  fused into a stubby nubbin—a  crucial aerodynamic feature of modern birds that shifts the  body’s center of mass toward  the wings, improving flight.  Creatures with bone structures resembling modern birds  weren’t believed to have appeared until nearly 20 million  years later, in the early Cretaceous Period. But the new fossil, uncovered in southeastern  China in 2023, tells a different  evolutionary story.
> 
> "Isotope dating of the surrounding mudstone indicated that the fossils were between  148 million and 150 million  years old, roughly the same  age as Archaeopteryx,  previously believed to  be the oldest example  of a bird.  With feathers like a  bird but a long tail  and claws similar to a  reptile, the hybrid  characteristics of Archaeopteryx have led to debates about its classification. About a dozen Archaeopteryx fossils have been uncovered, all in the southern  German state of Bavaria. “Paleontologists once expected more Jurassic bird fossils to emerge, but none did— until now,” said Stephen  Brusatte, a paleontologist at
> the University of Edinburgh who wasn’t involved in the  research. “This is very exciting."
> 
> "Fossils of birds are rare be cause of their fragile bones.  When Wang held the Baminornis zhenghensis fossil for  the first time, he said, his  heart raced.  “If there are still any doubts  about how birdy Archaeopteryx is,” he said, “Baminornis  is undoubtedly a real bird.”
> 
> Comment: this settles the argument. Dinosaurs gave us birds.