A recreation of Archaeornithura meemannae. – Zongda Zhang

Discovery has a story of the oldest known ancestor of living birds.  Archaeornithura meemannae lived in what is now northeastern China, over 130 million year ago.  This pushes back the timeline for modern birds by about 6 million years.  At 145 million years old, Archaeopteryx is still the oldest bird, but it has no living decendants.  Original paper in the journal Nature.

The newly found bird looked “nearly” like today’s shorebirds, senior author Zhonghe Zhou told Discovery News, although A. meemannae “could have been preyed upon by carnivorous dinosaurs.”

Zhou is director of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He and his colleagues analyzed the remains of the bird, represented by two very well-preserved specimens.

“Its forelimbs were shorter than its hind limbs, which is quite unusual,” lead author Min Wang said.

Because of its long legs and other anatomy, the researchers think the ancient bird spent much of its time near the shores of a lake, patrolling the area looking for insects and other small prey to eat. To this day, long-legged birds like cranes and herons have a somewhat similar lifestyle.

It sported feathers and was capable of flight, yet its wings were short, so the scientists think the bird had a mostly terrestrial existence.