fossil

The discovery of a creature described as resembling a “buck-toothed toucan” that lived some 68 million years ago has upended assumptions about diversity in the birds that lived alongside dinosaurs.

At less than nine centimetres (3.5 inches) long, the delicate skull of the bird scientists have dubbed Falcatakely forsterae might be easily overlooked.

In fact, it almost was, sitting in a backlog of excavated fossils for years before CT scanning suggested the specimen deserved more attention.

It turns out that its tall, scythe-like beak, while resembling the toucan, is something never before seen in the fossil record.

Birds in the Mesozoic era — between 250 million and 65 million years ago — had “relatively unspecialised snouts”, Patrick O’Connor, lead author of a study on the new creature, told AFP.

“Falcatakely just changed the game completely, documenting a long, high beak unlike anything known in the Mesozoic,” added O’Connor, professor of anatomy and neuroscience at Ohio University.

This handout picture taken on November 10, 2020, and released by the Ohio University on November 25, 2020, shows a photograph (top) and a scan produced by high-resolution micro-computed tomography of the skull of a fossilized Falcatakely forsterae Photo: Ohio University / Ben SIEGEL

The skull, described in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature, offered other surprises.

While Falcatakely would have had a face quite familiar to us from such modern birds as toucans and hornbills, the bones that made up its face bear little resemblance to those modern creatures.

“Despite an overall face shape similar to modern birds like toucans, the underlying skeleton is much more similar to non-avian theropod dinosaurs like Deinonychus and Velociraptor,” O’Connor said.

That “turns what we know about Mesozoic bird anatomy upside-down.”

Revealing these features was no easy task.

Graphic on an ancient bird that lived alongside dinosaurs, whose fossilised remains found in Madagascar sheds new light on the evolution of bird diversity Photo: AFP / John SAEKI

The fossil was originally collected in 2010 in northwestern Madagascar.

When researchers finally turned their attention to it seven years later, they faced a problem: the skull and beak were far too fragile to extract for examination.

So the team used a form of high-resolution imaging and digital modelling to “virtually dissect” the bones.

They then used 3D printers to rebuild the skull and compare it with other known species.

What they found was an almost touchingly improbable animal, according to Daniel Field, of Cambridge University’s department of earth sciences, who reviewed the study for Nature.

It is not just the unexpected bill, but the fact that the beak in the fossil is tipped with a single preserved tooth, possibly one of many the bird would have had.

“These features give the skull of Falcatakely an almost comical profile — imagine a creature resembling a tiny, buck-toothed toucan,” Field wrote.

None of the approximately 200 bird species known from the period “has a skull resembling anything like Falcatakely”, he added.

For O’Connor, the discovery is evidence of the