"Birds are one of the most intelligent groups of living vertebrate animals," says Daniel Field, a vertebrate biologist at the University of Cambridge. "They really rival mammals in terms of their relative brain size and the complexity of their behaviors, social interactions, breeding displays." This highlights the advanced cognitive capabilities of birds, suggesting a significant evolutionary development in their brain size and function.
Luis Chiappe, a paleontologist, mentions that fossil evidence is often flattened. "They're beautiful, but they're all like roadkill. They're all flattened and there are aspects that you're never going to be able to recover from those fossils." This brings attention to the challenges scientists face in reconstructing the evolutionary history of bird brains from fossilized remains.
The discovery of Navaornis hestiae, a prehistoric bird that lived around 80 million years ago, provides crucial insight into bird brain evolution, filling a gap in understanding how modern birds have developed. The fossil's remarkable preservation allows for a better understanding of the brain's three-dimensional structure.
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