World’s Oldest Bird Gives Birth to Yet Another Chick–at Nearly 74 Years Old

Wisdom – USFWS / SWNSThe world’s oldest known bird has returned to her home island to hatch yet another chick, at nearly 74 years old.Named Wisdom, the Laysan albatross has been spotted this month caring for her youngster on Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge in the Pacific Ocean.Like others of her species, Wisdom returns to the same nesting site each year to reunite with her mate and if able, lay one egg.For decades, park officials in the Hawaiian Archipelago observed Wisdom doing this with the same partner (named Akeakamai), but that bird has not been seen for several years, which caused Wisdom to begin courtship dances with other males last year.The spry septuagenarian is estimated to have produced 50-60 eggs in her lifetime, successfully fledging as many as 30 chicks, according to the expert staff at the refuge 1,300 miles northwest of Honolulu.Albatross parents share the responsibility of feeding their young by taking turns hunting while the other stays at the nest to watch over the chick.“So when Wisdom returns to the nest (it’s) her partner’s turn to go hunt for squid, fish and crustaceans,” said a statement from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service–Pacific Region.Biologists first identified and banded Wisdom in 1956 after she laid an egg. They determined her estimated age from that event 69 years ago, because the large...

Read More........→March 08, 2025

Scientists Discover Oldest Bird Fossils, Rewrite History of Avian Evolution

A photograph and interpretive line drawing show the Baminornis zhenghensis fossil – credit: Min WangAccording to a truly field-altering fossilized bird found in China, birds already existed in the Late Jurassic period, approximately 160 million years ago.The new discovery suggests that rather than a linear evolutionary path from dinosaur to bird, these two orders evolved somewhat simultaneously.An artistic representation of the newly discovered species, Baminornis zhenghensis, with the preserved bones highlighted – credit: Zhao Chuang.Baminornis zhenghensis is the world’s oldest species of avid. A holotype fossil was recently found in East China’s Fujian Province and described in the journal Nature. The pelvis, trunk, forelimbs, and part of the hindlimb are all intact.“Baminornis is a landmark discovery and ranks among the most important bird fossils unearthed since the discovery of Archaeopteryx in the early 1860s,” Stephen Brusatte, a paleontologist from the University of Edinburgh who was not involved in the study but wrote a commentary accompanying it, tells Xinhua.“This is a groundbreaking discovery. It overturns the previous situation that Archaeopteryx was the only bird found in the Jurassic Period,” Zhonghe Zhou, a paleontologist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-author of the study, tells the Chinese news agency...

Read More........→March 05, 2025