Beijing: A mystery from the dinosaur era has come to light, which has given modern science and forensic experts sleepless nights. 12 crore years (120 million years) ago, a bird died in such a painful and strange way that hearing it even today gives goosebumps. This bird did not fall prey to any hunter, nor did any disease kill it immediately. The cause of its death was its own strange action – it had swallowed not one or two, but more than 800 small stones. Solving this mystery is proving to be a difficult task for scientists. After all, why did a small bird the size of a sparrow eat so many stones? Was he sick? Had he gone mad? Or was it part of a particular habit of his that proved fatal? Paleontologist Jingmai O’Connor and her team at Chicago’s Field Museum have taken up the task of solving this ‘cold case’.
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The fossil of Chromiornis funki was in such excellent condition that the outlines of the skin around its neck, wings and legs, feathers, the dark pigments of its eyes, and even signs of muscle were present. But what caught O’Connor’s attention the most was a strange bulge near her neck. When he looked closely, he found that this bulge was nothing but a bunch of hundreds of small stones.
A mountain of stones was stuck in the neck
- O’Connor explains, ‘I noticed that there was a very strange mass of stones in his esophagus, right near his neck bones. This was really very strange, because in none of the fossils that I know of, such a bunch of stones has been found inside the neck of any animal.
- When scientists counted these stones, they were stunned. More than 800 stones were stuck in the neck of this little bird. The bird may have weighed only 33 grams (1.16 ounces), but it had swallowed a large amount of stones for its weight. Investigation revealed that these stones were not part of the rock in which the fossil was found. That is, these stones were not deposited there after the death of the bird, but the bird had swallowed them while it was alive.
- Usually birds eat stones. In the language of science it is called ‘Gastroliths’. These stones get deposited in the gizzard i.e. a part of the stomach of the bird. Since birds do not have teeth, these stones help in grinding and digesting food. But in the case of Chromiornis funki this theory failed.
- O’Connor and his team found that the bird family Chromiornis belongs to (Longipterygidae) did not have a gizzard to grind food. Moreover, the number of stones and their volume were so high that it could not aid digestion in any way.
- O’Connor said, ‘We found more than 800 stones in the neck of this bird, which is much more than other birds with gizzards. And based on their density, some of these stones didn’t even look like real stones, they were like little balls of clay.’ This clearly meant that these stones were not swallowed to digest food. Then what was the reason?
Chromeornis might have looked something like this. (Eve Ahn)
How did this bird die?
When scientists investigated from a forensic perspective, a horrifying truth came to light. O’Connor believes that these stones took the life of this bird. The most likely possibility is that the bird might have tried to regurgitate these stones out. But the bunch of stones had become so big that it got stuck in the throat.
‘Even if we don’t know why this bird ate all those stones, I’m fairly certain that the effort of spitting out that mass caused it to suffocate, and that’s what killed the little bird,’ O’Connor said. Imagine how much that little creature must have struggled in its last breaths, when its throat was choked with stones.
This bird died after eating 800 stones, you will be shocked to know the reason. (Sunny Dror)
Illness or any deficiency?
Now the question arises that why did he eat stones at all? Scientists believe that perhaps this bird was ill. Even today, when many birds are sick or lack any nutrients, they start eating strange things. This is called ‘pica’ behaviour. Perhaps Chromiornis was feeling parasites in the stomach or it was lacking some mineral, to fulfill which it started swallowing stones.
‘When birds are sick, they start acting strange,’ says O’Connor. ‘So we have put forward a tentative hypothesis that it was a sick bird which was eating stones because it was sick. He swallowed a lot of stones, and then tried to spit them out as a big lump. But the mass of stones was very large, and it got stuck in his esophagus.’
Cromornis funkei, a prehistoric bird that died with hundreds of stones in its neck. (Jingmai O’Connor)
Is this a sign of extinction?
Chromiornis funki and its entire family were destroyed in the great extinction that occurred 66 million years ago, which also wiped out the dinosaurs. But this one fossil shows us a rare glimpse of life at that time. This shows that even in prehistoric times, creatures were struggling with diseases and strange behaviour. O’Connor says that learning more about Chromiornis and other extinct birds can help us with today’s conservation efforts.
This research has been published in the journal ‘Palaeontologica Electronica’. This story reminds us that stones and rocks not only store history, but they also sometimes bear witness to history’s most tragic deaths. This ‘medical mystery’ of a small bird has now been solved, but it has left behind many questions about how difficult and unpredictable life must have been in that period.
