Prehistoric bird left paleontologists with strange medical mystery

A prehistoric bird that lived 120 million years ago has left paleontologists with a strange medical mystery.

The fossil of the sparrow-sized creature revealed a shocking cause of death — it choked after swallowing more than 800 small pebbles that became lodged in its throat, CE Report quotes Kosova Press.

This unusual discovery raises many questions about the diet and behavior of prehistoric birds, especially since no such case has been recorded in modern species, writes Science Alert.

“It’s difficult to determine the cause of death from fossil data. But while we don’t know why this bird ate all those stones, I’m quite sure that consuming such a large quantity caused choking, and that is what killed the little bird,” said paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor of the Field Museum in Chicago.

The fossil of the newly discovered species, named Chromeornis funkyi, attracted scientists’ attention as soon as it was uncovered at the Shandong Tianyu Museum in China.

It was preserved in a Lagerstätte formation — a type of sedimentary rock known for preserving remains with extraordinary precision, including soft tissues — reports KosovaPress.

These details allowed scientists to place Chromeornis on the evolutionary tree. It was a small bird weighing about 33 grams and belonged to the extinct Longipterygidae family.

A closer examination of the fossil revealed a massive accumulation of small stones.

“I noticed this strange mass of rocks in its esophagus, right next to the neck bones,” O’Connor said.

“That’s really odd, because in all the fossils I know, no one has ever found a mass of stones inside an animal’s throat.”

Analysis showed that the mineral composition of the stones differed from the surrounding rock, confirming that the bird swallowed them during its lifetime.

The bird family to which Chromeornis belonged lacked a gastric mill — the muscular part of the stomach that grinds food. Moreover, the quantity and volume of stones were far too large for a bird of its size.

“We found more than 800 small stones in this bird’s throat, far more than we would expect even in birds with a functioning gizzard. Based on their density, some of these weren’t really stones at all — they looked more like small clay pellets. It’s very clear that they were not swallowed to help grind food,” O’Connor explained.

Another possibility, which scientists consider the most likely, is that Chromeornis was ill. Some modern birds are known to swallow stones or soil to replenish nutrients or expel parasites.

Chromeornis and its entire bird family went extinct 66 million years ago. The research was published in the journal Palaeontologica Electronica.