We know that birds evolved from dinosaurs around 150 million years ago , but we still do n’t know how birds first gained the ability to aviate . But a part of the bird mastermind that verify flight could work this evolutionary riddle .
Towards the tooshie of birds ’ brain is the flocculus , a substructure of the cerebellum that wield visual and balance information during flight of stairs , work it potential for birds to know where other physical object are located while they ’re pilot and avoid any midair crashes . According to Stig Walsh of National Museums Scotland , tracking the size of it and form of the flocculus throughout bird ’ evolutionary history could reveal when dame first make headway the ability to fly :
“ We conceive we can discover how the flocculus has develop to deal with unlike fly ability , founder us new info about when birds first germinate the power of flight . We are particularly concerned in species that are closely related where there are flying and flightless examples , such as cormorant , pigeon , parrot and ducks . ”
They hope to pick up whether the flocculus get smaller as bird species lose the power of flight , as obviously they no longer have to judge where other objects are in the breeze . Along with over 100 flight and flightless modern birds , the investigator are examine keep brains from extinct species , including the comparatively recent remains of a 17th century fogy , a Cretaceous sea bird that live on 100 million years ago and lack escape , and the oldest screw pilot bird Archaeopteryx .
If the size of the flocculus really does correlate with how well hoot can process optic and symmetry information during flight , then that could provide a very powerful tool for measuring the path of bird evolution . It might let research worker to understand when ancient birds first evolve flocculuses magnanimous enough to sustain flight , and it will also avail us understand whether ancient razzing - like fossils were flightless birds or , in fact , dinosaur that never gain ground flight in the first place .
The researchers still have a lot of work to do – the results wo n’t be out until 2012 – but Walsh distrust that , whatever they discover , this wo n’t be the end of the account by any stretchiness :
“ With the heated debate about these animals , this would be an excellent finding , though I ’m certain the debate wo n’t terminate there . ”
[ viaLiveScience ]
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