Aquatic Origin of All Modern Birds?

U.S. and Chinese geologists dug up several nearly complete three-dimensional fossil imprints of uncrushed, loon-like birds called Gansus. They are named for the Gansu region, 2,000 kilometers west of Beijing, where they were found in rocks that used to be the muddy bottom of an old lake. Only the fossils' heads and upper necks are missing.The remains show their structure in rich detail, leading one of the scientists to say that the birds' features are strikingly modern for 110-million years of age."No other fossil bird of this age, and even some fossil birds that are much younger than Gansus, has this same suite of modern style features," said Jerald Harris of Dixie State College in Utah, speaking at a Washington news briefing held by the journal Science, in which the study appears."Gansus is, therefore, the oldest known bird that is this modern in its anatomy," he said. "It helps us fill a gap in the evolutionary progression towards modern birds."The bird skeletons, although headless, offer plenty of evidence for an amphibious life. Their upper body structure shows that Gansus could take flight from water like a modern duck. The webbed feet and bony knees are clear signs that Gansus swam."This observation significantly strengthens a long-standing hypothesis that the origins of all modern birds - every one of the 10,000 bird species living today - probably took place in aquatic environments," said Matthew Lamanna. "Every bird living today, from ostriches to eagles to hummingbirds, probably evolved from a Gansus-like ancestor."

Long standing? Anyone know some background on this hypothesis?

And does it have anything to do with the evolution of feathers before flight?

This puts it in around the time of the raptors (which I know someone will soon correct me on this date)

Which puts them as cousins, as a quick observation (either that, or my whole post is total bull, which it probably is, 'cause I'm not too familiar with dinosaurs).

"Gansus is the oldest example of the nearly modern birds that branched off the trunk of the family tree that began with the famous proto-bird Archaeopteryx," said Peter Dodson of the University of Pennsylvania.The remains were dated to about 110 million years ago, making them the oldest for the group Ornithurae, which includes all modern birds and their closest extinct relatives

Fossils of those avians that gave rise to the modern bird lineage "are relatively rare in the Cretaceous," explains Matthew Lamanna of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, co-author of a paper detailing the finds, published today in Science. But "when we mapped ecology onto our evolutionary tree, a pattern became apparent that species leading up to modern birds are mostly aquatic," Lamanna notes...During Gansus's time, a group of birds called the Enantiornitheans--known as opposite birds because their wing joints are reversed compared to their modern relatives--dominated the skies. But the opposite birds perished along with the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

i guess it had to happen here sooner or later. they've already posted this article to t.o. a few times.gansus is not a new find. not even close. we had gansus fossils in the early 80's. this is just a very well preserved, and more complete find.

well, we've had a good idea that modern birds evolved from aquatic birds for a while -- the non-aquatic birds of the time, enantiornithes or "opposite birds" all died out. gansus is a close candidate for the ancestor of modern birds.

no. feathers were around long before gansus. he's much, much closer to what we'd call a modern bird, and well within everyone's definition of a bird. feathers evolved in dinosaurs, long before they were anything close to birds.

Gotta love overstatement eh?

When did the enantiornithes die out? With the dinosaurs?

Book I am reading suggests that being aquatic or able to burrow (small mice like mammals) was what led to survival of the KT event. The meteor hit rock with high sulfer content that may have resulted in very acidic rains.

Do we know if the first birds were terrestrial or aquatic?

I look at cormorants taking off and think ground effect plus high surface speed 'running' on water could have evolved to avoid predators.

This is also how flying fish would have evolved their wings.Oh yeah, add fish to the types of organisms that separately evolved wings.

i highly suspect that being aquatic is equally as good of an argument. many of the animals that did survive either lived in the water (fish) or spent a lot of time in the water (crocodiles). of course, most of the mammals of the time were burrowers. but this would be a good explanation why all of the earlier relatives of modern birds are aquatic.

ol, there is a slight difference though. flying fish are running from predators in the water. the longer they stay out of it, the less likely they are to be eaten. instant selection factor.

Were the other fossils found with archy terrestrial? I would think they would have to be or much more would have been said about aquatic birds.

I was thinking of some of the more 'predatory' waterfowl - cormorants and the like catch and eat fish, and the "flightless" cormorant uses its wings underwater (as do penguins, another fish predator). Plus the insulation value of feathers for a warmblooded diver ... call it the aquatic bird concept.