Chinese fossil shows owls rejected night for fun in the sun

May 27, 2024

The study was published on Monday in peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

01:08

Massive 180-million-year-old ‘sea dragon’ fossil unearthed in England

Li Zhiheng, the lead author of the study and a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), said the fossil was the first trace of an ancient daytime-active owl.

“There were previous studies on owl fossils, but they didn’t analyse their behaviour and didn’t know clearly about their evolutionary history,” he said.

“Our study is the first comprehensive analysis of the evolution of nocturnal and diurnal owls.”

Thomas Stidham, a co-author of the study and also a researcher at the CAS, was quoted as saying by the institution that the fossil was the first record of an evolutionary process spanning millions of years and stretching across the globe, during which some owls evolved to “reject the night for some fun in the sun”.

Tantalising dinosaur discovery in China hints at one day finding DNA

The ancestors of the owls were all nocturnal, but a small group of species evolved with diurnal habits, Li said.

The fossil was found in the Linxia Basin in Gansu province, close to the northeastern edge of the Tibetan Plateau. It had preserved nearly the entire skeleton from head to feet, and included the tail bone, the researchers said.

Their report said that they analysed the owl’s eye bones and compared their characteristics with those of about 360 species of bird and 55 species of reptile, which led them to find that the own was diurnal.

02:00

Dinosaur fetus’ position inside Chinese egg fossil supports ancestral link with birds

They carried out statistical analysis on behavioural data from the bird species, including owls, and found that the extinct owl’s ancestors had evolved from nocturnal to diurnal habits.

“Their results show that the ancestor of all living owls was almost certainly nocturnal, but the ancestor of the Surniini group was instead diurnal,” the CAS said.

Li said the evolution of diurnal owls might be linked to changes in the climate and environment in the Tibetan Plateau region, but that this was not yet proven.

“We will keep researching other bird species in the region and discovering their relationship to ecology and biodiversity,” he said.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tK%2FMqWWcp51ku6bD0miaoaGelny0r8iepZydX5a%2FtbXCpZxoa2Fsf3KEkWiZnpmbnruoec2erqxlk522r7HSnmSfp6Ootq150qGmsKtdpMStv4yrnKOdk6mypXnNop6hrF2bwq950q6l