#patagopteryx

[alphynix]

While birds are one of the few animal groups to have achieved powered flight, they're also very prone to losing their aerial abilities. Many times over their evolutionary history, multiple different bird lineages have convergently become secondarily flightless – and Patagopteryx deferrariisi was one of the earliest known examples of this.

Living during the Late Cretaceous, about 86-84 million years ago, in what is now the northern part of Argentine Patagonia in South America, Patagopteryx was roughly the size of a modern chicken at around 50cm long.

When it was first discovered it was classified as a ratite, but soon after it was recognized as actually being a much earlier type of bird, an early ornithuromorph only distantly related to any modern groups.

It had small wings, little-to-no keel, and no wishbone, indicating it lacked the large powerful musculature required for flight. Its legs were quite long, with large feet with all four toes facing forward – proportions that suggest it was built more for walking than for high-speed running.

Growth rings in its bones also show that it had a much slower growth rate than modern birds, taking several years to reach adult size.

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References:

Agnolin, Federico L., and Agustín G. Martinelli. "Fossil birds from the Late Cretaceous Los Alamitos Formation, Río Negro Province, Argentina." Journal of South American Earth Sciences 27.1 (2009): 42-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsames.2008.09.003

Chiappe, Luis M. "The first 85 million years of avian evolution." Nature 378.6555 (1995): 349-355. https://doi.org/10.1038/378349a0

Chiappe, L. M. "Osteology of the flightless Patagopteryx deferrariisi from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia (Argentina)." Mesozoic birds: above the heads of dinosaurs (2002): 281-316. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281640883_Osteology_of_the_Flightless_Patagopteryx_deferrariisi_from_the_Late_Cretaceous_of_Patagonia_Argentina

Wikipedia contributors. “Patagopteryx.” Wikipedia, 22 Apr. 2024, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagopteryx

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Trick or Treat!!! 👻

Patagopteryx!

[papermonkeyism]

You mentioned theropod chickens, I raise you mesozoic bird-chickens! Hear me ot. Chicken-like birds may have been a thing in the Late Creraceous, but we really don't have good material on them. However, there is the flightless Patagopteryx from Argentina, as well as the fact that very early members of the ratite- and gamefowl-groups appeared in the Late Cretaceous. So something tinamou-, duck-, or grouse-like isn't out of the question.

Ooo, thanks! I shall do some googling later!

But yeah, birds were definetely a thing way before the dinosaur project thingy's time frame (Campanian, Late Cretaceous). I remember seeing something about a recent discovery of a chicken-duck ancestor, but I couldn't recall when and where it lived.

I need something that lived in north-ish Laramidia in campanian age, but there's nothing really stopping me from making up something small and brushing it off as preservation bias either.

[albertonykus]

Do you trust Ding et al.’s (2019) Jeholornis/Patagopteryx clade?

I take it that you mean their preprint on coelurosaur biogeography? I would first note that this manuscript has not yet been peer-reviewed and formally published in a journal. Of course, a study need not have been peer-reviewed to be trustworthy, but it’s important to keep in mind when interpreting the article.

More importantly, the phylogeny they show in the paper is not the direct result of a phylogenetic analysis. They instead got their phylogenetic tree by creating a maximum agreement subtree from the results of Brusatte et al. (2014), which essentially means that they took an “average” of all the trees found in that study after pruning out unstable taxa. This is a useful method if you happen to need a single bifurcating tree for your research, but it’s probably not surprising that it may result in the occasional spurious relationship.

Long story short, no, there’s nothing here that would lead me to think that a sister group relationship between Jeholornis and Patagopteryx is especially likely.

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

my untreated sleep apnea was acting up buT I RETURN FROM MY ETERNAL NONRESTFUL SLUMBER to bring you our next dinosaur group race

enant groups based on Wang et al 2022 for my sanity

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

Patagopteryx deferrariisi

Source: http://dinopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Patagopteryx

Name: Patagopteryx deferrariisi

Name Meaning: Patagonia Wing

First Described: 1992

Described By: Alvarenga & Bonaparte

Classification: Dinosauria, Saurischia, Eusaurischia, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Patagopterygiformes

And now the rest of the dinosaurs from 1992 that we will look at are... birds. Hooray! Today’s dinosaur is Patagopteryx, a short-tailed avialaen that looked a lot like modern flightless birds, but it actually just evolved convergently - it is not any more closely related to them than it is to other birds. It also evolved from flighted birds - meaning its own flightlessness was secondary, as opposed to evolving directly from flightless maniraptorans. It did not have a wishbone, meaning it was impossible for it to have the muscles necessary for flying. It had a curved claw on the second toe that was not used as a weapon. It was omnivorous, and was discovered in the Bajo de la Carpa Formation in Sierra Barrosa, northwestern Patagonia, Argentina. It lived around 80 to 85 million years ago, in the Santonian age of the Late Cretaceous, making it the oldest known flightless bird. Back then, it wouldn’t really have been that indistinguishable from other dinosaurs that it lived alongside, such as Achillesaurus and Alvarezsaurus. It also lived alongside less bird-like dinosaurs such as Velocisaurus and Bonitasaura. 

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patagopteryx

http://www.prehistoric-wildlife.com/species/p/patagopteryx.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bajo_de_la_Carpa_Formation

Shout out goes to prosperlost!