99-Million-Year-Old New Bird Species With Weird-Looking Toes Has Been Discovered In Myanmar

This is just one among the world's endless secrets that are yet to be uncovered.

Mary

• Published in Animal Stories
• March 1, 2022

You might have already seen a beautiful millipede or a spider that has a tail. Now, a bird with elongated toes that are longer than its toes covered in amber may surprise you like the researchers when they found out about it.

The new species of bird identified as Elektorornis chenguangi was introduced in a study conducted by a group of researchers published in the journal Current Biology. The lead author of the paper, Lida Xing of the China University of Geosciences in Beijing, said in a press release that she was certain it was a bird.

According to Xing, "Although I've never seen a bird claw that looks like this before, I know it's a bird. Like most birds, this foot has four toes, while lizards have five."

The bird's fossil remains were first found in Hukawng Valley in Myanmar last 2014. However, amber traders initially thought that the remains inside the amber were from a lizard as its foot resembled those that are found on tree-climbing lizards and lemurs.

After being studied by scientists, they later revealed that it was a bird, enclosed in a 99-million-year-old amber, dating from the Cretaceous period. Moreover, they pointed out that the bird's unusual foot means that it is an ancient bird that existed alongside dinosaurs.

An artist's illustration of what the bird named Elektorornis chenguangi looks like and how it uses its strange-looking toes.

One of the co-authors, Jingmai O’Connor of Beijing’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, stated that the bird was the first one of its kind. "We have the leg of a little 99-million-year-old bird, preserved in amber, that shows a foot morphology unlike any known previously,” says O'Connor.

"I've never seen anything like this, or even close. Imagine a scale on a chicken foot in which the distal end tapers into a very fine, almost hairlike bristle,” O'Connor said.

Before coming up with the name Elektorornis chenguangi, the scientists carefully examined the bird's remains and they realized that the foot was so distinctive. The name "elektorornis" means "amber bird," being the first bird species found on amber.

A long-toed bird preserved in amber from Myanmar.

The bird was about the size of a sparrow and it has four toes. The third toe was 20% longer than its lower leg bone, and it was 41% longer than its second toe.

To further understand the lifestyle of this bird, scientists made a comparison with other known species with long fingers like the aye-aye. An aye-aye is a lemur that uses its elongated toes to get larvae and bugs from tree trunks, and scientists think that the new bird species utilizes its toes the same way as an aye-aye.

A reconstruction of the long-toed bird’s unusual limb.

Moreover, the amber where the bird's foot was encased, was placed under a CT scan for them to make a 3D model. The model was constructed for comparison with 62 current and 20 extinct bird species, and these endeavors served to highlight the foot's bizarre nature.

As O'Connor said, “I love that new discoveries still reveal animals so outside our expectations. Our imaginations are so limited compared to the bizarre forms natural selection can produce."

Currently, there are still ongoing studies on this new bird species before scientists can finally prove what these strange-looking toes were used for. Like and share to discover more interesting stories!

Mary