A fossil attributed to a small feathered dinosaur may not be a dinosaur at all, but rather a … lizard, according to new research. With the new criticism, the March study, titled “Hummingbird-sized Dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period of Myanmar” was removed yesterday (July 22) from the magazine. Nature where it had been published, according to a statement in the magazine.
The skull of the 99 million-year-old creature was buried in amber when scientists discovered it in a mine in Myanmar (formerly Burma), and although the creature was somewhat rare with its bird-shaped head and approximately 100 very sharp teeth, The researchers concluded that this was probably the smallest dinosaur ever found. (He probably weighed just 0.07 ounces (2 grams), the weight of the two-dollar bills, Live Science previously reported.)
If the animal (Oculudentavis khaungraae) was a bird-like or lizard-like dinosaur, which doesn’t deny the significance of the find, study scientists say. “It is a really strange animal and an important discovery, regardless of whether it is a strange bird or a strange bird-headed lizard,” said study co-lead researcher Jingmai O’Connor, senior professor of paleontology at vertebrates at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. , he told Live Science in an email.
Related: Photos: Canned Hatchling in Amber
A study published in bioRxiv, a prepress database where studies are “published” before being reviewed by fellow scientists, postulates that the specimen is a lizard. In this new study, Zhiheng Li, from the Institute of Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of Vertebrates of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and colleagues examined computed tomography (CT) scans of the little animal and found several features of the animal that contradicted the idea of a similar dinosaur. to a bird and they said it aligned much better with the lizard features. teeth like lizards and the characteristics of their fenestra, or the openings in the skull behind the eye sockets found in animals such as dinosaurs and lizards.
O’Connor and colleagues published their response, also in bioRxiv, saying that while “they accept any new interpretation or alternative hypothesis” of the creature, this new research “could not provide conclusive evidence for the reidentification.” However, O’Connor told Live Science that “I think we were wrong and that Oculudentavis it’s a lizard, not a bird, you just can’t prove it unequivocally with the available evidence. “
So the jury still doesn’t know the creature’s true identity. Another team of researchers (different from the bioRxiv group) is studying a different specimen of the same species, but have not yet published their findings. If the creature is, in fact, a lizard, the fossil could represent a “strange new example of convergent evolution between very disparate groups of reptiles, “O’Connor said. (Convergent evolution occurs when two organisms that are not closely related develop similar traits. In this case, the creature had a bird’s head.)
O’Connor noted that she had tested whether the specimen was a bird or a lizard in a phylogenetic or family tree analysis, which included several fossil birds. “As long as other birds have been included in the analysis, Oculudentavis it settled like a bird, “O’Connor said.” The removal of all the birds caused it to settle like a lizard, but it also caused the collapse of the main reptile clades, showing how strange the specimen is. “
In addition, O’Connor said Burmese amber is known to preserve hummingbird-sized birds that lived during the Cretaceous period (145 million to 65 million years ago) in what is now Myanmar. However, it is possible that this creature was not among them, he said.
The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) published a letter in April (one month after the original Nature study came out) asking its members to refrain from using Burmese amber collected or exported from Myanmar since June 2017, because the proceeds from the sale of this amber could fuel the decades-long civil war of the country, according to a Piece published in 2019 Science journal. However, the piece that O’Connor and his colleagues examined was found in 2016.
Originally published in Live Science.
