Science and Nature Program

The Origin of Modern Birds: New Fossil Evidence from China and Antarctica

Matthew C. Lamanna, Ph.D.
Assistant Curator, Section of Vertebrate Paleontology
Carnegie Museum of Natural History

Comprising over 10,000 species, modern birds (Neornithes) are today’s most diverse group of land-living backboned animals. Nevertheless, the origins of these birds from toothed, long-tailed ancestors during the Cretaceous Period (the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, or Age of Dinosaurs) remain poorly understood. Expeditions led by Matt Lamanna and colleagues have uncovered dozens of exquisitely-preserved avian fossils—many of them including soft-tissues such as feathers and skin—from ~120 million-year-old lake sediments in the Changma Basin of northwestern Gansu Province, China. An overwhelming majority of these specimens belong to Gansus yumenensis, a semi-aquatic bird that, despite its great antiquity, is thought to be closely related to Neornithes. More recently, Lamanna and a different group of collaborators have conducted expeditions to latest Cretaceous exposures in the James Ross Basin of the Antarctic Peninsula in search of what may be the world’s most ancient neornithines. Dr. Lamanna will chronicle his teams’ discoveries of Chinese and Antarctic Cretaceous birds and their implications for the rise of modern avians.