Ulysse Lefèvre, Dongyu Hu, François Escuillié, Gareth Dyke, and Pascal Godefroit (2014)
A new long-tailed basal bird from the Early Cretaceous of north-eastern China
Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 113:790-804.
A new basal Avialae, Jeholornis curvipes sp. nov., from the Yixian Formation (Early Cretaceous) of Liaoning
Province (north-eastern China) is described. A revision of long-tailed birds from China and a phylogenetic analysis
of basal Avialae suggest that Jeholornithiformes were paraphyletic, with Jixiangornis orientalis being the
sister-taxon of pygostylia. The phylogenetic analysis also recovered that the tail reduction is a unique event in the
evolution of birds. Jeholornis species were cursorial, nonperching, and seed-eating birds.
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