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Insight into the evolutionary assemblage of cranial kinesis from a Cretaceous bird

View ORCID ProfileMin Wang, Thomas A. Stidham, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Zhonghe Zhou
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.13.499923
Min Wang
1Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
2Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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  • For correspondence: wangmin@ivpp.ac.cn
Thomas A. Stidham
1Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
2Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
3University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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Jingmai K. O’Connor
4Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA
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Zhonghe Zhou
1Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
2Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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Abstract

The independent movements and flexibility of various parts of the skull, called cranial kinesis, is an evolutionary innovation that is found in living vertebrates only in some squamates and crown birds, and considered to be a major factor underpinning much of the enormous phenotypic and ecological diversity of living birds, the most diverse group of extant amniotes. Compared to the postcranium, our understanding of the evolutionary assemblage of the characteristic modern bird skull has been hampered by sparse fossil records of early cranial materials, with competing hypotheses regarding the evolutionary development of cranial kinesis among early members of the avialans. Here, a detailed three-dimensional reconstruction of the skull of the Early Cretaceous enantiornithine Yuanchuavis kompsosoura allows for its in depth description, including elements that are poorly known among early diverging avialans but are central to deciphering the mosaic assembly of features required for modern avian cranial kinesis. Our reconstruction of the skull shows evolutionary and functional conservation of the temporal and palatal regions by retaining the ancestral theropod dinosaurian configuration within the skull of this otherwise derived and volant bird. Geometric morphometric analysis of the palatine suggests that loss of the jugal process represents the first step in the structural modifications of this element leading to the kinetic crown bird condition. The mixture of plesiomorphic temporal and palatal structures together with a derived avialan rostrum and postcranial skeleton encapsulated in Yuanchuavis manifests the key role of evolutionary mosaicism and experimentation in early bird diversification.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY 4.0 International license.
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Posted July 14, 2022.
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Insight into the evolutionary assemblage of cranial kinesis from a Cretaceous bird
Min Wang, Thomas A. Stidham, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Zhonghe Zhou
bioRxiv 2022.07.13.499923; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.13.499923
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Insight into the evolutionary assemblage of cranial kinesis from a Cretaceous bird
Min Wang, Thomas A. Stidham, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Zhonghe Zhou
bioRxiv 2022.07.13.499923; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.07.13.499923

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