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Early bird had usually high metabolism rate, even for a bird

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Confuciusornis male.jpg
Confuciusornis male/Tommy from Arad, Naturhistorisches Museum Wien

From ScienceDaily:

The new specimen from the rich Early Cretaceous Jehol Biota (approximately 131 to 120 million years old) is referred to as Eoconfuciusornis, the oldest and most primitive member of the Confuciusornithiformes, a group of early birds characterized by the first occurrence of an avian beak. Its younger relative Confuciusornis is known from thousands of specimens but this is only the second specimen of Eoconfuciusornis found. This species comes only from the 130.7 Ma Huajiying Formation deposits in Hebei, which preserves the second oldest known fossil birds. Birds from this layer are very rare.

This new specimen of Eoconfuciusornis, housed in the Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, in Eastern China, is a female. The ovary reveals developing yolks that vary in size, similar to living birds. This suggests that confuciusornithiforms evolved a period of rapid yolk deposition prior to egg-laying (crocodilians, which are archosaurs like birds, deposit yolks slowly in all eggs for months with no period of rapid yolk formation), which is indicative of complex energetic profiles similar to those observed in birds.

This means Eoconfuciusornis and its kin, like living birds, was able to cope with extremely high metabolic demands during early growth and reproduction (whereas energetic demands in crocodiles are even, lacking complexity). In contrast, other Cretaceous birds including the more advanced group the Enantiornithes appear to have lower metabolic rates and have required less energy similar to crocodilians and non-avian dinosaurs (their developing yolks show little size disparity indicating no strong peak in energy associated with reproduction, and much simpler energetic profiles, limited by simpler physiologies). Paper. (public access) – Xiaoting Zheng, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Xiaoli Wang, Yanhong Pan, Yan Wang, Min Wang, Zhonghe Zhou. Exceptional preservation of soft tissue in a new specimen of Eoconfuciusornis and its biological implications. National Science Review, 2017; DOI: 10.1093/nsr/nwx004 More.

So greatly differing metabolism rates could be found in birds of the era. There does not seem to have been a long, slow march of birds to fast metabolism.

See also: Guided evolution? Bird brains predate birds

and

Convergent evolution: Distantly related birds, same crests

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Comments
"Early bird had usually high metabolism rate, even for a bird." I'm guessing you actually meant: ...had UNUSUALLY high metabolism...mahuna
April 17, 2017
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Early bird had usually high metabolism rate, even for a bird.
I guess it needed the high metabolism to catch the earl worm. :)Armand Jacks
April 17, 2017
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