Context: Recently, paleontologists have announced the discovery of a fossil beaked bird ancestor in Northeastern China.
The nearly complete fossil is of a beaked bird that lived in what is now China during the Early Cretaceous epoch, some 119 million years ago.
About Confuciusornis shifan:
Confuciusornis is a genus of extinct raven-billed bird in the family Confuciusornithidae.
Confuciusornithidae is a clade of Early Cretaceous pygostylian birds known from the Jehol Biota of East Asia.
It weighed less than 200 grams and was smaller than most other confuciusornithid species.
It represents the earliest known toothless, beaked birds.
It is different from other Mesozoic birds due to the presence of an additional cushion-like bone in the first digit of the wing.
This feature is significant as it may have helped the bird meet the functional demand of flight at a stage when the skeletal growth was still incomplete.
