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Researchers have disclose the earliest bird footprints ever found in Australia , showing that these former hoot once lived in southern pivotal regions on the supercontinentGondwana .
palaeontologist unearthed the razzing tracks in Wonthaggi Formation in Victoria , Australia , that date back to around 120 million years ago , during the Early Cretaceous ( 145 million to 100.5 million years ago ) .
Wonthaggi bird tracks discovered in Australia are the oldest ever discovered in the Southern Hemisphere.
Prior to these findings , there has been minimum grounds of other Cretaceous birds in Australia — consisting of limited gaunt material , feather and two tracks . At that sentence , what is now Australia was part of Gondwana and was further south , pose near the South Pole .
" These bird tracks are scientifically important for several reasons . For one , they ’re the oldest in Australia , telling us that birds have been living in Australia for at least 120 million years . But they ’re also the old bird tracks in the Southern Hemisphere , which cover a circumstances more of the Cretaceous world , " study co - author authorAnthony Martin , a fossilist at Emory University in Atlanta , Georgia , told Live Science .
" These track are from when this part of Australia was still connected to Antarctica and skinny to the South Pole then . So this makes them the oldest dame footprints from formerly polar environments . "
Wonthaggi Formation avian tracks with a diagram showing the digits. Scale = 5 cm in all parts.
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researcher say the course give insight into how former birds disperse across land mass and biomes . Cretaceous bird fossils are extremely rarified in southern region — unlike in the northern Continent , where a various image of other bird fossils have been found . The study , issue Nov. 15 in thejournal PLOS ONE , describes 27 birdie footprint of vary size and shapes , which are grounds that several ancient bird species lived in the region , including some of the big known birds from theCretaceous .
The researchers describe the tracks as belonging to avian creature because they were tridactyl ( think of they had three digits on a base ) , with slight finger and sharp claws .
The shuttle tracks were pick up on marine outcrops that would once have been an ancient polar floodplain , suggesting that the area could have been part of a migratory route during diametrical summers , the researchers suggest in the bailiwick .
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The authors indicate the fossilized tracks are evidence of seasonal behaviors , as the bird would have walk across the surface of the beds after the weather unthaw in the bounce season . It also suggests that other Cretaceous fowl might have fly to what is now Australia from northern region of Gondwana during Southern Hemisphere springs .
" Because these bird tracks were made in glacial environments at least 120 million year ago , and they were preserved on what were then river floodplains , we think this present that birds were living in these place during the summertime there , after spring thawing , " Martin said . " That further implies that they in all likelihood are n’t living there during dusty , coloured wintertime , so they may have migrate seasonally to and from other environs . "
The investigator go for the raw find will inspire others to front for more grounds of Cretaceous birds in the Southern Hemisphere . " We can then well understand where birds break up early in their evolutionary history , and about when they started changing the world , " Martin say .
