Quantitative investigation of pengornithid enantiornithine diet reveals macrocarnivorous ecology evolved in birds by Early Cretaceous

Case Vincent Miller; Michael Pittman; Xiaoli Wang; Xiaoting Zheng; Jen A Bright

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106211

Quantitative investigation of pengornithid enantiornithine diet reveals macrocarnivorous ecology evolved in birds by Early Cretaceous

iScience. 2023 Feb 16;26(3):106211. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106211. eCollection 2023 Mar 17.

Authors

Case Vincent Miller¹, Michael Pittman², Xiaoli Wang^{3

4}, Xiaoting Zheng^{3

4}, Jen A Bright⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Earth Sciences, the University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China.
² School of Life Sciences, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China.
³ Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Linyi University, Linyi, Shandong 276005, China.
⁴ Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, Pingyi, Shandong 273300, China.
⁵ Department of Biological and Marine Sciences, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK.

Abstract

The diet of Mesozoic birds is poorly known, limiting evolutionary understanding of birds' roles in modern ecosystems. Pengornithidae is one of the best understood families of Mesozoic birds, hypothesized to eat insects or only small amounts of meat. We investigate these hypotheses with four lines of evidence: estimated body mass, claw traditional morphometrics, jaw mechanical advantage, and jaw finite element analysis. Owing to limited data, the diets of Eopengornis and Chiappeavis remain obscure. Pengornis, Parapengornis, and Yuanchuavis show adaptations for vertebrate carnivory. Pengornis also has talons similar to living raptorial birds like caracaras that capture and kill large prey, which represents the earliest known adaptation for macrocarnivory in a bird. This supports the appearance of this ecology ∼35 million years earlier than previously thought. These findings greatly increase the niche breadth known for Early Cretaceous birds, and shift the prevailing view that Mesozoic birds mainly occupied low trophic levels.

Keywords: Evolutionary biology; Ornithology; Paleobiology.