Publication Date:
2013-03-16
Description:
Recent discoveries of large leg feathers in some theropods have implications for our understanding of the evolution of integumentary features on the avialan leg, and particularly of their relevance for the origin of avialan flight. Here we report 11 basal avialan specimens that will greatly improve our knowledge of leg integumentary features among early birds. In particular, they provide solid evidence for the existence of enlarged leg feathers on a variety of basal birds, suggest that extensively scaled feet might have appeared secondarily at an early stage in ornithuromorph evolution, and demonstrate a distal-to-proximal reduction pattern for leg feathers in avialan evolution.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Zheng, Xiaoting -- Zhou, Zhonghe -- Wang, Xiaoli -- Zhang, Fucheng -- Zhang, Xiaomei -- Wang, Yan -- Wei, Guangjin -- Wang, Shuo -- Xu, Xing -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2013 Mar 15;339(6125):1309-12. doi: 10.1126/science.1228753.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Linyi University, Linyi City, Shandong, China. ty4291666@163.com〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23493711" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Birds/*anatomy & histology
;
Feathers/*anatomy & histology
;
*Fossils
;
Hindlimb/*anatomy & histology
;
Wings, Animal/*anatomy & histology
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
