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| New Specimens of Yanornis Indicate a Digestive System of Living Birds |
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In a recent paper describing ten new specimens of Yanornis martini identified by the director of the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Natural History Mr. Xiaoting Zheng, an international team of scientists lead by Dr. Jingmai O’Connor of the Institute of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, reveal that the digestive system of the ancestors to modern birds was essentially modern in all aspects. The study was published April 14 in PLOS ONE (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0095036).
Fig.1 Yanornis preserving whole fish in the crop and macerated fish bones in the ventriculus: (A) full slab, scale bar equals five cm; (B) detail of the crop, scale bar equals one cm; (C) detail of the ventriculus, scale bar equals one mm.(Image by Jingmai O’Connor)
Fig.2 Interpretative drawing of the alimentary canal of Yanornis superimposed
over a specimen. Scale bar equals 1 cm. (Image by Jingmai O’Connor)
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