Yanornis martini is an Early Cretaceous basal ornithurine bird. Its fish-eating diet was previously recognized from a discrete mass of disarticulated fish remains discovered in its abdominal region. A new complete and articulated specimen of Yanornis martini preserves abundant in-situ gastroliths such as have been associated with a herbivorous diet. We suggest that the occurrence of gastroliths in this specimen, fish remains in a second, and the lack of gastroliths in three others, is consistent with diet-switching in Yanornis martini. Incompatibility of the preserved data with explanations of the grit as an artifact of preservation or result of accidental ingestion is discussed. This discovery indicates the earliest presence of intermittent diet change (and associated gizzard plasticity) observed in extant birds seasonally and in response to changes in available food sources.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this article Subscribe and saveSpringer+ Basic
€34.99 /Month
Price includes VAT (Germany)
Instant access to the full article PDF.
Explore related subjectsDiscover the latest articles and news from researchers in related subjects, suggested using machine learning. ReferencesBetts MM (1955) The food of titmice in oak woodland. J Anim Ecol 24:282–323
Canevari PG, Castro M, Sallaberry Y, Naranjo LG (2001) Guía de los Chorlos y Playeros de la Región Neotropical: American Bird Conservancy, WWF-US, Humedales para las Américas y Manomet Conservation Science, Asociación Calidris, Santiago de Cali, Colombia
Cott HB (1961) Scientific results of an inquiry into the ecology and economic status of the Nile Crocodile (Crocodilus niloticus) in Uganda and Northern Rhodesia. Trans Zool Soc Lond 29(4):211–391
de Klerk WJ, Forster CA, Sampson SD, Chinsamy A, Ross-Callum F (2000) A new coelurosaurian diosaur from the early cretaceous of South Africa. J Vert Paleontol 20:324–332
Gionfriddo JP, Best LB (1996) Grit-use patterns in North American birds: the influence of diet, body size, and gender. Wilson Bull 108:685–696
Gionfriddo JP, Best LB (1999) Grit use by birds: a review. Curr Ornithol 15:89–148
Henderson DM (2003) Effects of stomach stones on the buoyancy and equilibrium of a floating crocodilian: a computational analysis. Can J Zool 81:1346–1357
Ji Q, Norell MA, Makovicky PJ, Gao K, Ji S, Yuan C (2003) An early ostrich dinosaur and implications for ornithomimosaur phylogeny. Am Mus Novit 3420:1–19
Klerk WJ de, Forster CA, Sampson SD, Chinsamy A, Ross-Callum F (2000) A new coelurosaurian dinosaur from the Early Cretaceous of South Africa. J Vert Paleontol 20:324–332
Kobayashi Y, Lü J, Dong Z, Barsbold R, Azuma Y, Tomida Y (1999) Herbivorous diet in an ornithomimid dinosaur. Nature 402:480–481
Lambrecht K (1931) Protoplotus beauforti ein Schlangenhalsvogel aus dem Tertiär von W. Sumatra. Dienst van den Mijnbouw in Nederlandsch-Indie Wetenschappelijke Mededeelingen 17:15–24
Mateus O (1998) Lourinhanosaurus antunesi, a new upper Jurassic allosauroid (Dinosauria: Theropoda) from Lourinhã, Portugal. Mem Acad Cienc Lisboa 37:111–124
Myers JP, Williams SL, Pitelka FA (1980). An experimental analysis of prey availability for sanderlings (Aves: Scolopacidae) feeding on sandy beach crustaceans: Can J Zool 58 1564–1574
McKeown KC (1937) The food of trout in New South Wales. Rec Aust Mus 20:38–66
Proctor N, Lynch P (1993) Manual of ornithology. Yale University Press, New Haven, N.J.
Reeders WG (1951) Stomach analysis of a group of shorebirds. Condor 53:43–45
Richards A (1988) Shorebirds: a complete guide to their behavior and migration: Gallery Books, New York
Siegel-Causey D (1990) Gastroliths assist digestion in shags. Notornis 37:70–72
Spitzer G (1972) Jahreszeitliche Aspekte der Biologie der Bartmeise (Panurus biarmicus). J Ornithol 113:241–275
Starck JM (1999) Phenotypic flexibility of the avian gizzard: rapid, reversible and repeated changes of organ size in response to changes in dietary fibre content. J Exp Biol 202:3171–3179
Taylor MA (1993) Stomach bones for feeding or buoyancy? The occurrence and function of gastroliths in marine tetrapods. R Soc Philos Trans Biol Sci 1296:163–175
Thomson AL (1964) A new dictionary of birds. McGraw-Hill, New York
Wings O (2003) The function of gastroliths in dinosaurs: new considerations following studies on extant birds. J Vert Paleontol 23 (suppl to part 3):111A
Xu X (1997) A new psittacosaur (Psittacosaur mazongshanensis sp. nov.) from Mazongshan area, Gansu Province, China. In: Dong Z (ed) Sino-Japanese Silk Road Dinosaur expedition. China Ocean Press, Beijing, pp 48–67
Zhang Z, Zhou Z, Hou L, Gu G (2001) Early diversification of birds: evidence from a new opposite bird. Chin Sci Bull 46(11):945–949
Zhou Z, Zhang Z (2001) Two new ornithurine birds from the Early Cretaceous of western Liaoning, China. Chin Sci Bull 46(15):1258–1264
Zhou Z, Zhang F (2002a) Largest bird from the Early Cretaceous and its implications for the earliest avian ecological diversification. Naturwissenschaften 89:34–38
Zhou Z, Zhang F (2002b) A long-tailed, seed-eating bird from the Early Cretaceous of China. Nature 418:405–409
Zhou Z, Zhang F (2003a) Jeholornis compared to Archaeopteryx, with a new understanding of the earliest avian evolution. Naturwissenschaften 90:220–225
Zhou Z, Zhang F (2003b) Anatomy of the primitive bird Sapeornis chaoyangensis from the Early Cretaceous of Liaoning, China. Can J Earth Sci 40(5):731–747
Zhou Z, Wang X, Zhang F, Xu X (2000) Important features of Caudipteryx: evidence from two nearly complete new specimens. Vert PalAsiat 38(4):241–254
Zhou Z, Clarke J, Zhang F (2002) Archaeoraptor’s better half. Nature 420:285
Zhou Z, Barrett P, Hilton J (2003) An exceptionally preserved Lower Cretaceous ecosystem. Nature 421:807–814
We thank X. Wang for help in collecting the specimen, X. Xu, X. Wang, F. Jin, and J. Zhang for discussions, and Y. Huo for preparation of the specimen. The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (40121202), Special Funds for Major State Basic Research Projects of China (TG2000077706), the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the WISC Program of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Author information Authors and AffiliationsInstitute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, PO Box 643, 100044, Beijing, China
Zhonghe Zhou & Fucheng Zhang
Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, NY, 10024, USA
Julia Clarke
Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum Hannover, Willy-Brandt-Allee 5, 30169, Hannover, Germany
Oliver Wings
Correspondence to Zhonghe Zhou.
About this article Cite this articleZhou, Z., Clarke, J., Zhang, F. et al. Gastroliths in Yanornis: an indication of the earliest radical diet-switching and gizzard plasticity in the lineage leading to living birds?. Naturwissenschaften 91, 571–574 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-004-0567-z
Received: 17 July 2004
Accepted: 15 August 2004
Published: 28 September 2004
Issue Date: December 2004
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-004-0567-z
RetroSearch is an open source project built by @garambo | Open a GitHub Issue
Search and Browse the WWW like it's 1997 | Search results from DuckDuckGo
HTML:
3.2
| Encoding:
UTF-8
| Version:
0.7.4