Reconstruction of Brevirostruavis macrohyoideus with its mouth open to reveal its long tongue that was used to get or catch pests nectar from cone-bearing plants. Credit: IVPP
A new fossil skeleton of an extinct species of bird from northeastern China that lived alongside dinosaurs 120 million years ago unexpectedly maintains a bony tongue that is nearly as long as its head.
The skull is really well preserved, showing that it had a reasonably brief snout and small teeth, with exceptionally long and curved bones for the tongue (called the hyoid device).
Scientists from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Texas at Austin have actually named this bird Brevirostruavis macrohyoideus, which suggests “bird with a brief snout and big tongue.”
This extinct short-snouted, big-tongued bird is the earliest example of a bird being able to stick its tongue out. Of course, this function makes one marvel why this bird would be sticking its tongue out. The researchers hypothesized that the bird might have utilized this feature for catching pests in the very same method that living woodpeckers utilize their tongues to get pests out of holes in wood, tree, and bark branches. The scientists formerly showed that these early birds had fairly stiff skulls like their dinosaur loved ones. This bird progressed a long tongue utilizing the bones it inherited from its dinosaur ancestors, and living birds progressed longer tongues with the bones that they have.
Their discovery was released in Journal of Anatomy on December 1, 2021.
We find out rapidly as kids to stick out our tongues, but a lot of birds and reptiles do not have big muscular tongues like humans. Birds instead have a set of rod-shaped aspects made from bone and cartilage making up the hyoid apparatus that beings in the floor of their mouth.
In birds with larger tongues like parrots and ducks, they utilize their tongue to move food around in their mouth, get food into their mouth, and assist to swallow food. Some birds today like woodpeckers and hummingbirds have a bony tongue as long or longer than their skulls.
Photograph and illustration of the skull of the extinct Cretaceous enantiornithine bird Brevirostruavis macrohyoideus, with the curved bones of the long tongue highlighted in orange. Credit: IVPP
Of course, this feature makes one wonder why this bird would be sticking its tongue out. The scientists hypothesized that the bird might have used this function for capturing bugs in the very same method that living woodpeckers utilize their tongues to get pests out of holes in wood, tree, and bark branches.
This short-snouted, big-tongued bird becomes part of an extinct group of birds called enantiornithines or “opposite” birds. They were the most effective group of birds during the Cretaceous Period (between 66 and 145 million years ago), with fossils discovered worldwide.
” We see a lot of variation in the shapes and size of the skulls of enantiornithine birds and that most likely shows the great variety of the foods they consumed and how they captured their food. Now with this fossil, we see that its not simply their skulls, however their tongues that also vary,” said Dr. WANG Min, co-author of the research study.
The scientists formerly showed that these early birds had fairly stiff skulls like their dinosaur loved ones. This function set some practical and evolutionary limitations on early birds. “Perhaps the only way for them to basically change through development how they caught their food and what food they ate was to reduce their skull in this case and to make the tongue bones a lot longer,” said lead author Dr. LI Zhiheng.
The long, curved hyoid device in the fossil bird is made from bones called ceratobranchials. Living birds likewise have such bones in their hyoid, however it is the epibranchial bones, missing in early risers, that are extremely long in birds like woodpeckers.
” Animals experiment evolutionarily with what they have available. This bird developed a long tongue utilizing the bones it acquired from its dinosaur forefathers, and living birds evolved longer tongues with the bones that they have. This scenario demonstrates the power of evolution, with birds utilizing 2 different evolutionary paths to fix the same problem of making a long tongue to stand out of their mouths,” stated co-author Dr. Thomas Stidham.
Reference: “Novel advancement of a hyper-elongated tongue in a Cretaceous enantiornithine from China and the advancement of the hyolingual apparatus and feeding in birds” by Zhiheng Li, Min Wang, Thomas A. Stidham, Zhonghe Zhou and Julia Clarke, 1 December 2021, Journal of Anatomy.DOI: 10.1111/ joa.13588.