Research On Confuciusornis And Their Feathers Of The Early Cretaceous From Jehol Biota, China

Confuciusornis is known as one of the primitive birds, it still at an early stage on the originof early bird and the early avian evolution. Confuciusornis possesses some primitive andremarkable progress morphological characteristics. such as, the digit of forelimb still with claws,skull still with postorbital bone, and it already has the cutin beak. It was found afterarchaeopteryx, it has played a significant role in paleornithological studies. Up to now, there areten valid species and thousands of specimens have been reported in China, Confuciusornischuanzhous and Confuciusornis sunae are placed within the same family of Confuciusornissanctus. Confuciusornis lived in the early cretaceous, the time it lives span over ten million years.Research has previously been carried out on Confuciusornis from nearly every perspectivewithin the field of paleornithology, the most extensive and detailed wok has been in the area ofosteological description of Confuciusornis. The found of thousands of fossils of Confuciusornishave contributed extensively to studying the orign of the early birds and the early avianevolution.The fossils come from Shandong Tianyu museum of natural history in this article, in whichcollect about six hundred fossils of Confuciusornis. Drawing on carefully observations for thesefossils of confuciusornis, we select some specimens and make description for their bones andfeathers.Based on the detailed description of the osteology of the specimen (STM13-32), it shouldbe a species of Confuciusornis sanctus, it is distinguished by the following combination offeatures: teeth absent on either upper or lower jaw, the front end of dentary expanded;deltopectoral crest of the humerus enlarged and it is penetrated by a pneumatic foramen; thesecond phalange of the major digit strongly arched. The structure of the flight feather of theConfuciusornis have little difference with the modern birds, and combination with the osteologyof Confuciusornis can prove it already has relatively strong flight ability. Confuciusornispreserved the leg feathers, and it ilustrates the hindlimbs play a supplementary role for the flight of the early birds. By the statistics for the tail feathers, we find the blade-like rectrices appearedin every growth stage of Confuciusornis,and its sexual dimorphism can not be determined by thetail feathers, and it also plays a relatively important role in flight of these birds.