As any bambino chase pigeons in the parking area know , it ’s not hard to figure out which birds can vanish and which ca n’t . Sorting the flighted from the flightless is a little harder when those birds are bushed — and even harder when they ’re nonextant . Now one dodo expert has developed a system that may help oneself . He published his findings inThe Auk : Ornithological Advances .
Junya Watanabe studies paleontology , evolutionary biological science , geology , and mineralogy at Kyoto University . His research into the evolutionary history of wench has brought him up tight with the anatids , a large family that admit ducks , goose , and swans . Today , most of these dame are blithely flap around , but that may not have always been the causa .
expert have found more than 15 fossilize anatid species that would have been ineffectual to flee . We think . We ’re not certain , because until now , we have n’t really had a good way of sussing out what fly face like in animals that have been gone for millions of geezerhood .
The results showed physically tiny but evolutionarily significant departure between the species that could fly and those that could n’t . Like thedoomed dodos of yore , today ’s flightless wench generally have chunkier leg and smaller wings than their airborne cousins .
By using the same algorithm on 16 species of ossified anatids , Watanabe could easy spot which birds might have flown , long ago . His resultant corroborate other scientist ’ suspicions about bird likePtaiochen pao , whose name derives from the Greek and Hawaiian quarrel for “ destroyed stumbling goose . ”
Helen James is conservator of hoot at the Smithsonian Institution ’s National Museum of Natural History . She said Watanabe ’s new system will be especially helpful in causa where only part of a fossilized hiss has been find .
“ Other researchers will appreciate that he offers a way to evaluate limb ratio even in fossil species where the os of single birds have become disassociated from each other , ” she said in a statement . “ Disassociation of skeletons in fossil internet site has been a dour roadblock to these type of advanced statistical psychoanalysis , and Dr. Watanabe has have an important step towards overcoming that problem . ”
