Jinguofortis, a new pygostylian bird from China

[Halichoeres]

Meet Jinguofortis perplexus, a new pygostylian (member of the lineage of short-tailed birds from which modern birds emerged). I haven't read the full article, as it is paywalled and my institution won't have it for another week or so. But meanwhile:


A largely complete fossil, nice to have for this part of the tree!


And a nice reconstruction by Chung-Tat Cheung (of Vitae fame).

Here's the paywalled paper: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/18/1812176115

And a pretty decent write-up that avoids a lot of the common pitfalls of dinosaur reportage: https://gizmodo.com/check-out-this-incredible-extinct-bird-from-the-cretace-1829275965

Finally, Andrea Cau took their phylogenetic data matrix and coded in Balaur (not included in the paper's analysis), finding it very closely related to this much smaller bird. That's a pretty interesting result I'd like to see interrogated more. http://theropoda.blogspot.com/2018/09/balaur-un-jinguofortisidae-gigante.html