How do birds fly? Chinese feather fossil may hold key to 130-million-year-old question
Discovery of protein in ancient avian specimen could help scientists reconstruct properties of early birds and animals
Researchers have identified a protein essential to flight in the fossilised feathers of a 130-million-year-old bird fossil, according to a China-led international study.
The discovery of the protein, which is also found in modern avian species and gives feathers elasticity, suggests that birds mastered the art of flying before the extinction of dinosaurs, which is believed to have contributed to their survival until today.
The molecular structure of beta-keratin, a protein that contributes to the formation of a protective layer over bird feathers, could have been preserved under certain conditions in the long process of fossilisation, according to a paper released by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States on Tuesday.
“This is the oldest report of ultrastructure consistent with beta-keratin from an Early Cretaceous bird feather,” the authors said in the paper.
The team, led by Dr Pan Yanhong, a researcher with the Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Jiangsu, examined a fossil specimen of Eoconfuciusornis, an extinct bird species found in the Jehol deposit in Liaoning province.
