This 'weird' prehistoric bird species ate fruit, not flesh in China, shows fossil analysis

A weird prehistoric bird 'Longipteryx', which has a beak filled with ultra-strong teeth, may have been eating fruits and not flesh in China120 million years ago.

The scientists from the Field Museum,Chicago, found fossilised fruit in the belly of this bird, which highlighted its diet.

This evidence suggested that Longipteryx did not eat fish but may have been eating insects along with fruits.

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The study's lead author, Jingmai O'Connor, said, "Longipteryx is one of my favourite fossil birds, because it’s just so weird— it has this long skull, and teeth only at the tip of its beak."

The remains of the prehistoric bird were discovered in 2000 beneath Northwestern China and had left palaeontologists puzzled.

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Dr O'Connor said that the evidence which has come up with the new theory didn't fit with the idea that they were eating fish.

"Longipteryx is one of my favourite fossil birds, because it's just so weird— it has this long skull, and teeth only at the tip of its beak," he said.

"There are other fossil birds, like Yanornis, that ate fish, and we know because specimens have been found with preserved stomach contents, and fish tend to preserve well. Plus, these fish-eating birds had lots of teeth, all the way along their beaks, unlike how Longipteryx only has teeth at the very tip of its beak. It just didn't add up," said O'Connor.

Prehistoric bird's puzzling diet

Dr O'Connor, during a trip to the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature in China, spotted two specimens which had something in the stomachs.

When he looked closer, he saw it was neither fish nor insects but the fruit from trees.

Because Longipteryx lived in a temperate climate, the researchers are not convinced by the argument that they ate fruit all year round, which means that they should have had a mixed diet.

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"It’s always been weird that we didn’t know what they were eating, but this study also hints at a bigger picture problem in palaeontology, that physical characteristics of a fossil don’t always tell the whole story about what animal ate or how it lived," Dr O'Connor said.

The researchers discovered that Longipteryx's teeth were coated with a layer of enamel 50 microns thick.

"Tooth enamel is the hardest substance in the body, and Longipteryx'stooth enamelis 50 microns thick. That's the same thickness of the enamel on enormous predatory dinosaurs like Allosaurus that weighed 4,000 pounds, but Longipteryx is the size of a bluejay," said Alex Clark, co-author of the paper.

(With inputs from agencies)