A new fossil discovered in northwest China’s Junggar Basin may be a key link in how modern-day birds evolved from ancient dinosaurs. From BBC:
A new dinosaur unearthed in western China has shed light on the evolution from dinosaur hands to the wing bones in today’s birds.
The fossil, from about 160 million years ago, has been named Limusaurus inextricabilis.
The find contributes to a debate over how an ancestral hand with five digits evolved to one with three in birds.
The work, published in Nature, suggests that the middle three digits, rather than the “thumb” and first two, remain.
