Plumadraco, new enantiornithine bird from Lower Cretaceous of China (free pdf)

[Ben Creisler]

Ben Creisler

bcre...@gmail.com

A new paper:

Free pdf:

Plumadraco bankoorum gen. et sp. nov.

Alexander D. Clark, Jingmai K. O’Connor, Xiaoli Wang, Yan Wang, Stephen Pruett-Jones, Xiangyu Zhang, Xing Wang, Xiaoting Zheng & Zhonghe Zhou (2026)
Hyperelongate ornamental tail feathers in a new early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird
PLoS One 21(5): e0347641.
doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0347641
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0347641


Bird diversity is reflected in the abundance and variety of extraordinary plumages. Some of these include elongate, ornamental tail feathers that are typically attributed to either intraspecific communication in monomorphic species or sexual selection in sexually-dimorphic ones. Enantiornithines (Aves: Ornithothoraces) were the most diverse group of birds during the Cretaceous. Importantly, some enantiornithine fossils preserve soft tissues, most often in the form of feathers surrounding the body. Unlike any living bird, many enantiornithine specimens lack tail feathers (rectrices) all together, with the tail region consisting entirely of contour feathers. However, when present, enantiornithine rectrices typically consist of a pair of elongate, ornamental feathers with unusually wide rachises, referred to as rachis-dominated feathers. Here we describe Plumadraco bankoorum gen. et sp. nov., a new bohaiornithid enantiornithine with a pair of exceptionally long rectrices. These tail feathers measure twice the individual’s body length, ending in proportionally small pennaceous rackets, thus adding to the growing diversity of these unusual feathers. The fine preservation of these tail feathers, in comparison to other enantiornithine rectrices, reveals previously unrecognized structural variation that hints at their potential function in courtship displays. Although ornamental feathers in enantiornithines are widely considered sexually dimorphic, determining the selection pressures that shaped them is difficult due primarily to limited soft tissue data. Enantiornithine rectrices are likely the result of an interplay between both sexual and naturally selective pressures, similar to the processes which produce analogous structures in birds today.

[Tim Williams]

The genus _Cratoavis_ is put in inverted commas, in both the main text and Table S2.

Previously, in "The Fossil Record of Mesozoic and Paleocene Pennaraptorans" (in doi.org/10.1206/0003-0090.440.1.1) by Pittman et al. (2020), _Cratoavis_  is listed as "(valid?)" in their big Table 5 "Mesozoic avialan fossil record".  But again, there's no further information.

Is something up with the validity of _Cratoavis_?

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[Mickey Mortimer]

"Unlike any living bird, many enantiornithine specimens lack tail feathers (rectrices) all together..."

Do kiwis, emus and cassowaries have rectrices?

Mickey Mortimer

[Franco Sancarlo]

apparently not, citing Chandler (1914) (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/bibliography/15062) " In ratite birds there are no specialized rectrices among the Casuariiformes or the Apterygiformes, while in the Struthioniformes and the Rheiformes the rectrices are large and developed" . I have not found modern paper on the argument

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[Sean McKelvey]

Technically, yes. At least for Emus and Cassowaries. They take the form of bristles rather than the large, broad tail feathers of most other birds.

Though, I suppose you could argue that those don't count as retrices.

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[Mickey Mortimer]

"Technically, yes. At least for Emus and Cassowaries. They take the form of bristles rather than the large, broad tail feathers of most other birds.Though, I suppose you could argue that those don't count as retrices."

I guess the followup question then is would these be recognizable in enantiornithine fossils that would otherwise seem to lack rectrices? My guess would be no for Jehol fossils considering the usual decay and compression. The single Burmese amber specimen that preserves the area (HPG-15-1) is a hatchling with at least one rectrix (Xing et al., 2017) much shorter than the tail, although the authors interpret this as an undeveloped display rectrix.

Reference-  Xing, O'Connor, McKellar, Chiappe, Tseng, Li and Bai, 2017. A mid-Cretaceous enantiornithine (Aves) hatchling preserved in Burmese amber with unusual plumage. Gondwana Research. 49, 264-277.

Mickey Mortimer