Peacocks may be among the most flamboyant birds alive today, but they certainly weren’t the first to develop extravagant plumage to woo mates. Meet Plumadraco bankoorum, aka “Banko’s feathered dragon”: A diminutive black-brown bird from the Early Cretaceous boasting tail feathers almost twice its body size.
According to lead author Alex Clark, a Ph.D. candidate at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago, the feathers are among the longest tail feathers, proportionally speaking, of a fossilized bird discovered to date.
“Plumadraco was the size of an American robin, but its tail feathers were about a foot long, twice the length of its body,” Clark said in a statement.
The study has been published in PLOS One.
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Why P. bankoorum Is Such a Rare Fossil
Photograph of the Plumadraco fossil and an illustration showing Plumadraco in life.
(Image Credit: Clark et al. illustration by Ville Sinkkonen.)
Clark spotted the bird among a collection of avian fossils at the Shandon Tianyu Museum in China. Struck by the size of its tail feathers, he decided to investigate.
“I saw this little guy, and I did a double-take when I saw the tail feathers,” he said.
Though much of its skeleton was poorly preserved, its feathers were remarkably well intact. This included a pair of ornamental tail feathers, one of which was complete, which is very rare for fossilized birds, according to Clark.
Further analysis revealed the specimen is an entirely new species of bird, since named P. bankoorum. Plumadraco translates to “feather” and “dragon” in Latin, while bankoorum honors father-son duo Winston and Paul Banko, both ornithologists and conservation biologists.
P. bankoorum Had Teeth
The species belonged to a clade of birds known as the enantiornithines, many of which (likely including P. bankoorum) would have had teeth. This was the largest, most diverse group at the time, though none of its members survived the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. (In fact, most living birds descend from just one group: neoaves.)
P. bankoorum would have lived 121 million years ago, during the Cretaceous, alongside gastropods, turtles, and theropods in northern China.
P. bankoorum’s Extraordinarily Long Feathers
While the bird's sex has not been confirmed, Clark suspects it was male due to its extraordinarily long tail feathers. These measured about 11 inches (293 mm), almost double their body length of about 6 inches (149 mm).
Some enantiornithine fossils show traces of muscle tissue suggesting limited movement in the tail region but the ability to pump the feathers up and down — a courting behavior seen in some birds, including peacocks, today. Meanwhile, the structure of the tails on the P. bankoorum specimen (stiff spines, a tapered shape, rounded tips) suggests individuals may have raised their feathers and flicked the ends forwards and backward.
The ornamental feathers may therefore have evolved to improve males’ breeding success, despite being costly and less than ideal from an aerodynamic perspective. In contrast, females — who likely tended to ground nests and, as such, were exposed to predators — were more likely to have had inconspicuous plumage.
“Based on these fossils, female choice in selecting ornamented males has been playing a huge part in how birds look and behave for more than 120 million years,” said Clark.
What Else Do We Know About Plumadraco bankoorum?
While knowledge of P. bankoorum currently hinges on a single specimen and assumptions based on the behavior of other enantiornithines, its location suggests that the species inhabited temperate, seasonal habitats in northern China. Meanwhile, chemicals in its feathers suggest it would likely have been dark brown or black.
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Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
- This article references information from a study published in PLOS One: Hyperelongate ornamental tail feathers in a new early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird
