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Showing results for tags 'avian dinosaur'.
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Questions about Paleocene records of the Bird Asteriornis
Joseph Fossil posted a topic in General Fossil Discussion
I'm researching bird fauna from the Danian Paleocene era recently and I have some questions about a particular bird, Asteriornis maastrichtensis. It was discovered in late 2019 in Maastrictian deposits of the Maastricht Formation, Cretaceous dating 66.8-66.7 Million Years ago in what is now Belgium and was pretty small in size, about the size of a small duck and weighed only 394 grams when alive. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2096-0 Asteriornis is the earliest confirmed Neognathae (a group of birds of which the majority of birds alive today belong to) and it's oldest remains date to just around One Million Years before the Cretaceous-Paleocene Astroid impact wiped out that last of the non-avian dinosaurs. I've seen a lot of people say that this bird species survived the Cretaceous-Paleocene Extinction event into the Paleocene. It's small size and diet of seeds make it a good candidate to have survived the event, but I haven't found any definitive records yet of Asteriornis from the early Paleocene. What I'm wondering is did Asteriornis survive the Cretaceous-Paleocene Mass Extinction Event 66 Million Years ago and are there any records of Asteriornis that date definitively to the Paleocene era?- 6 replies
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From the album: Hell Creek / Lance Formations
Avisaurus cf. archibaldi Hell Creek Fm., Garfield Co., MT, USA More information Avisaurus is an extinct, toothed Enantiornithine bird that lived at the very end of the Cretaceous. It likely held a similar niche that hawks/eagles do today, preying on small vertebrates like lizards and mammals.