News Paleontology

Ancient webbed masters

By Sid Perkins

- More than 2 years ago

Newly unearthed fossils of a 110-million-year-old species bolster the notion that all modern birds evolved from aquatic ancestors.

M. Klingler/Carnegie Museum of Natural History; (inset) H. You/Chinese Acad. of Geological Sciences

Fragmentary fossils of Gansus yumenensis collected earlier had suggested that it was a wading bird similar to today’s sandpipers, says Jerald D. Harris, a paleontologist at Dixie State College in St.