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

  • ️Sun Jan 01 2023

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

Case Vincent Miller et al. iScience. 2023.

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.

© 2023 The Author(s).

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

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Graphical abstract
Figure 1
Figure 1

Violin plots of extant bird mass, lumped based on trends apparent in Figure S1B Diets with the same letter are not significantly different in phylogenetic HSD at the p = 0.05 level (Table S2). Cut-off points, calculated using the Youden index (see STAR Methods), are labeled with a line. (A) Carnivores split into invertivores and vertivores. (B) Herbivores split into Folivores + Frugivores (FolFrug) and Granivores + Nectarivores (GranNect).

Figure 2
Figure 2

Phylomorphospace of extant avian unguals and pengornithid unguals, based on traditional morphometrics, grouped by pedal ecology Gray lines indicate phylogenetic relationships. Data are visualized with PCA (A), FDA (B), and pFDA (C). In PCA (A), PC1 describes talon curvature and PC2 describes interdigital size variation. In FDA (B), DA1 describes the size ratio of digits II and IV to digit III and DA2 describes the size ratio of digits I and II to digit III. In pFDA (C), DA1 and DA2 are primarily driven by the size ratios of DII and DIV to DIII. See Figure S2 for precise character weights. Taxon abbreviations: C, Chiappeavis; E, Eopengornis; Pa, Parapengornis; Pe, Pengornis; Pi, Pengornithidae indet. IVPP V18632.

Figure 3
Figure 3

Functional phylomorphospace of extant avian jaws and pengornithid jaws, based on mechanical advantage and functional indices, grouped by diet Gray lines indicate phylogenetic relationships. Data are visualized with PCA (A) and FDA (B). In PCA (A), PC1 is driven primarily by ACH, AMA of both jaws, AMH, and MMH (all in the negative direction). PC2 is driven primarily by lower jaw AO in the positive direction and PMA of both jaws in the negative direction. In FDA (B), DA1 is driven by primarily by upper jaw AMA, upper jaw OMA, and PMA and DA2 is primarily driven by lower jaw AMA, PMA, and OMA, upper jaw AO, MMH, AMH, and ACH. See Figure S5 for precise character weights. Diet abbreviations: GranivoreH, husking granivore; GranivoreS, swallowing granivore; Tetra Hunt, tetrapod hunter. Taxon abbreviations: Pa, Parapengornis; Pe, Pengornis; Y, Yuanchuavis.

Figure 4
Figure 4

Phylogenetic strain-space of total maximum in-plane principal strain of extant and fossil bird lower jaw finite element models in this study Gray lines indicate phylogenetic relationships. Data are visualized with PCA (A) and FDA (B). Results are obtained using the intervals method where the percentage of model area under intervals of strain are treated as variables for multivariate analysis. 35 intervals were used for PCA and 90 intervals were used for FDA. In PCA (A), overall strain increases along PC1 and unevenness of strain distribution increases along PC2. In FDA (B), DA1 and DA2 have loadings made of various low-strain intervals, with high-strain intervals clustering near the origin. See Figure S7 for precise character loadings. Diet abbreviations: GranivoreH, husking granivore; GranivoreS, swallowing granivore; Tetra Hunt, tetrapod hunter. Fossil taxon abbreviations: Pa, Parapengornis; Pe, Pengornis; Y, Yuanchuavis.

Figure 5
Figure 5

Reconstructions of pengornithid skulls Reconstructions are of Pengornis (A), Parapengornis (B), and Yuanchuavis (C). Colors of different bones indicate which specimen that bone is based on, or that empty tooth sockets were filled with the adjacent tooth. All sclerotic rings are based on Longipteryx specimen BMNHC Ph-930B. See the STAR Methods section for more details on reconstruction. Scale bars are based on IVPP V15336 (A), IVPP V18687 (B), and IVPP V27883 (C).

Figure 6
Figure 6

Known pennaraptoran diet, mapped onto a phylogeny The avialan topology is taken from Wang et al., with non-avialan branches grafted from Pittman et al. Oviraptorosaurian,, dromaeosaurid, and most avialan,, diets are mapped based on past works. Note that non-pengornithid avialan diets remain unknown (see Figure 11 in Miller and Pittman for illustration of this).

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