Smaller than a sparrow, a bird that lived 99 million years ago in what’s now Southeast Asia had legs unlike any other avian. The bird’s hindlimb features one toe longer than its entire lower leg bone.
Lucky for paleontologists, a piece of amber has preserved the animal’s odd anatomy.
Found in Burmese amber and identified as new species, Elektorornis chenguangi is known only from one hindlimb. But what a limb!
The bird’s third toe is markedly longer than its other digits. The toe is 41 percent longer than the next longest-digit (its second toe) and 20 percent longer than the animal’s entire tarsometarsus, or lower leg bone.
(If you’re wondering about your tarsometatarsus, don’t. Only birds and some non-avian dinosaurs have the bone. It’s a fusion of other hindlimb bones and in mammals is analogous to the foot and ankle.)
An artist’s rendering of Elektorornis chenguangi, showing the possible probing ...
