Very early birds may have had salt glands

[Halichoeres]

Salt glands are a way for birds, especially those that take in a lot of salts in their food, or that have a small body size for which kidneys are insufficient to maintain osmotic balance, to shed excess sodium (and other minerals). This paper describes evidence for a salt gland in Iteravis, an early Cretaceous ornithuromorph:

Open access, at least for now: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-22412-8

Featuring some gorgeous fossil images:

[Lanthanotus]

Thanks for sharing and nice to see evidence for organic feature, though in this case it's no real surpirse given that a lot of modern reptiles and (all?) crocodiles have this feature (I think Tuataras aswell, but am not sure at the moment)  - so it probably is a very old trait maybe rooting back to the time when reptilian features in general where the state of the art in evolution to become more independent from a permanent liquid water supply.

[Sinornis]

It appears this fossil has it all, salt gland fossa, crop content, gastroliths and entire skeleton! Science certainly owes China a debt of gratitude! I even pulled out my Southern Giant-Petrel skull just to admire its tube-nose! Thank you for posting the link to the paper.


lightshot

http://avianmusing.blogspot.com/

[Ravonium]

So now we have evidence that dinobirds had salt glands? Now to put that on the list of bird features discovered in fossils... 

Exactly the type of bird I was thinking of when I saw this topic. Nice skull.