Cambridge U tells SciTechDaily the story: “Evolving “Backward” – Discovery Overturns More Than a Century of Knowledge About the Origin of Modern Birds” (January 20, 2023):
A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and the Natuurhistorisch Museum Maastricht discovered that a crucial skull feature of modern birds, the mobile beak, had developed prior to the mass extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
This finding also suggests that the skulls of ostriches, emus and their relatives evolved ‘backward’, reverting to a more primitive condition after modern birds arose.
“Evolution doesn’t happen in a straight line,” said Field. “This fossil shows that the mobile beak – a condition we had always thought post-dated the origin of modern birds, actually evolved before modern birds existed. We’ve been completely backward in our assumptions of how the modern bird skull evolved for well over a century.”
Evolved “backward”? In other words, devolution? Funny, so few ever question a theory that is always being overturned by new findings.
Video showing the rotating pterygoid (a palate bone) of Janavis finalidens, which is very similar to that of living duck- and chicken-like birds. The bone was found as two matching fragments, which have been digitally fitted together. The bone is hollow and was likely full of air in life, as shown by the large opening on its side. Credit: Dr. Juan Benito and Dr. Daniel Field, University of Cambridge
Philip Cunningham points to these paragraphs from the PR:
The two groups were originally classified by Thomas Huxley, the British biologist known as ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ for his vocal support of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. In 1867, he divided all living birds into either the ‘ancient’ or ‘modern’ jaw groups. Huxley’s assumption was that the ‘ancient’ jaw configuration was the original condition for modern birds, with the ‘modern’ jaw arising later.
“This assumption has been taken as a given ever since,” said Dr. Daniel Field from Cambridge’s Department of Earth Sciences, the paper’s senior author. “The main reason this assumption has lasted is that we haven’t had any well-preserved fossil bird palates from the period when modern birds originated.”
Bulldogs, after all, are known for being stubborn, not for being on the right track.