Overview
- Researchers describe Chromeornis funkyi, a sparrow-sized longipterygid enantiornithine with teeth at the tip of its beak, based on a specimen from China’s Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature.
- The study, published in Palaeontologica Electronica, reports more than 800 small objects packed in the esophagus right against the neck bones.
- CT, volumetric, and mineralogical analyses show the objects were ingested in life, differ from surrounding rock and from one another, and are inconsistent with typical gizzard gastroliths, with some resembling tiny clay balls.
- The authors propose a tentative explanation in which the bird swallowed unusual material, attempted to regurgitate it, and the mass lodged in the throat, likely causing fatal choking.
- The fossil’s exceptional preservation from the Jiufotang Formation offers a rare window into an individual cause of death and provides data relevant to enantiornithine biology and their vulnerability at the end-Cretaceous extinction.